


Blood and Wine Are Red

by chasingtides



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: 17th Century, Character(s) of Color, Christianity, Colonialism, Developing Relationship, Early Modern Era, England (Country), Established Relationship, F/M, Female Characters, LGBTQ Themes, M/M, Malaria, Military Backstory, Multi, Mutual Pining, Older Characters, Poverty, References to Depression, Religious Content, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Shame, Sharing a Bed, Slave Trade, Slavery, communal living, hunger
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-13
Updated: 2019-06-13
Packaged: 2020-05-07 08:04:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 56,515
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19205281
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chasingtides/pseuds/chasingtides
Summary: 1653EnglandA charismatic preacher, Enjolras, broke from Whinstanely's True Levelers to found his own separatist sect, hoping to bring equality and hope to a fractured England. Grantaire knows he is an atheist and a libertine and has no place among the faithful, but finds himself tied to them nonetheless - by bonds of love, if not faith. There is no way they will succeed, but until they are driven out, whether by Javert or the army, he will stay as long as they will have him. It is merely a question of the law finding them before they realize he is too worthless to keep among them.





	Blood and Wine Are Red

**Author's Note:**

> This has been a labor of love, but a couple of notes before we jump in.
> 
> Enjolras (and to an extent, Combeferre and Courfreyac) are Christian preachers, if not ordained ministers. There is an entire Bible project that is central to the story. Be prepared for a lot of religious talk and Bible quoting. However, this is not about converting anyone (if it help, Grantaire is just as much an atheist in the final scene as the first) and honestly, Hugo played heavy with the Christian imagery, too.
> 
> I am not English. All of these towns are made up.

Grantaire leaned back in his chair, resting his aching back and watching everyone else move around him in preparation for the evening. The meeting house was never quiet, whether used for the women’s Bible studies in the morning or the shared lunch after long hours in the fields or, like this, men’s meetings in the evenings by candlelight and oil lamp. The scurry and the bustle, rather than become overwhelming, meant something closer to family than he had experienced in the anywhere else, even the New Model Army. And they all knew how that had turned out for him.

 

Keeping his dark eyes on the three men at the front of the room, he finally allowed himself to relax. After all, he truly enjoyed these evening men’s meetings, even if, more often than not, they ended in a debate that closely resembled a shouting match. Enjolras, Apollo truly incarnate on Earth, looked up from his papers and Grantaire imagined he met his eyes before turning to consult Combeferre. It was mere imagination, the creative spirit that drove him, usually to trouble, but his back ached and his heart was empty, so he allowed himself to be driven.

 

He was lucky, in the end, that the New Levellers - or Les Amis as their special heretical sect called themselves (and let’s not say what the people in Leeds and London called them) - took him in. Life had made him a bitter man and a cynic of the worst kind. After the incident with the New Model Army, he had lost even his faith in God, quite the scandal. The irony that he found himself enmeshed in a group with such pure and idealistic faith was never lost on him.

 

“Penny for your thoughts,” Joly said,leaning heavily on his oak walking stick, a tankard of their ale in his other hand. He took a seat next to him, taking a long draught of ale and giving Grantaire the space he needed to answer. The respectable doctor in his linen necktie and the dark jacket of his profession had taken a special liking to his impossible patient.

 

“Why am I here?” he replied at long last, gazing into his own half empty tankard. “I am nothing like an Ami, a friend, although you ought to be more careful than steal such titles from the Quakers. We, of course, share an affliction, but that hardly makes me your brother, any more than all lepers share a mother. I am a cynic and a libertine and an atheist and, as I was so well reminded today, above all things an artist trained in that unholy Jezabel Jerusalem, Paris. Even your high priest, your Prophet Elijah, the unrestrained divine son of the sun himself cannot imagine that he could reform such a corrupt and broken shell as myself. Even Cromwell’s army left me to the stocks and the lash.”

 

Joly’s face softened considerably as he gazed at his friend and he reached to rest a reassuring, gentle hand on the crook of Grantaire’s elbow. “When Enjolras broke with the New Levellers, it was over our affliction, as you call it, yes, but because we must do more. He has no desire to preach or convert, but to take action, to heal a nation so gravely wounded by war and rapine. If you are here, and you indeed have your own seat at the table, why would you question it? I am neither Guide nor Centre, but I know well enough that you must be part of your plan.”

 

Enjolras stood up from where he had been bent over the table, working on his papers. It was like him to eschew the altar and ambo and stand among the ordinary people.He stretched, his shirtsleeves pulling tight over his body, and ran a hand through his long curls, eternal proof he had never been part of the Roundheads despite his opposition to the throne. His simple dark waistcoat only emphasized the austerity of his linen shirtsleeves and white neckerchief. Grantaire sighed in futility and, with great effort, turned back to Joly.

 

“Nae, there is no need for such futile kindness, my doctor.” Leaning back in his seat, Grantaire could feel the scars tissue that constituted his back contract and spasm, arguing against his long day of labor working the fields les Amis had taken to support the village of Chatham where men, women, and children had been driven to eating grass and weeds in the lanes. “I am but a project, one of the lost sons of Adam your dear leader wants to bring back into the Light. You, having found me at my lowest and broken by Cromwell’s army, took me in because, unlike Ananias and Sapphira, you cannot hold back.” He paused, thinking on the situation. “I would not despair, but a man, even a man such as myself, must have his pride, though pride goeth before the fall. I may have been outlawed by king and crown, despised by all of the best and worst of society, but I am man enough not to desire the pity of those who call themselves my friends.”

 

“You are a friend and my patient,” Joly patiently told him, after draining his tankard. His knowing hazel eyes were steady as he gazed at him. “As your friend and your physician and your compatriot in this madness, your melancholy gnaws at you on these cold days. You are among Enjolras’ trusted lieutenants and among the trusted circle, else you would not have been invited here. We know the world does ill to many, that is why we are here.”

 

Before Grantaire could respond to such an obvious placation, there was a sudden silence in the hall, a complete ceasing of the evening men’s meeting. Courfreyac, the centre, the soul of their little tribe of heretics, stood with a pair of strangers. The man, with deeply tanned skin and clothing that placed him much higher than any Digger or Ami would imagine, with a fashionable ruff, silken hose, and a great felt hat. The woman at his side wore a simple fawn-brown skirt with a plain linen apron and wore her dark hair in an unfashionable plain braid, a woman after the heart of the Levellers. This was not unusual; Courfreyac was always finding strays and lost souls to bring into the flock. He had been the one who took Grantaire from the ale house to the communal hall, when they were still at Whitlowe, after all. But it was a rare thing, indeed, to have an obvious member of the landed gentry in their midst for any reason that was not driving them from the land.

Enjolras, ever a leader among equals, a preacher without a pulpit, an avenging Michael walking among the mortals he guarded, watched the newcomers with an uncharacteristic wariness. He was the one, when they were still among Winstanley’s merry band, who convinced them to set out on their own. He was the one who directed them when the New Model Army encroached; he used his standing as a lawyer to defend them in court against Peers; he always welcomed new members. Now, however, he stared at the young man as though he were one of the many lawyers who came to enclose the commons.

“This is Marius,” Courfreyac proclaimed, pushing the young man toward Enjolras despite his narrowed eyes. “I found him looking for his father’s house in the lane near the former fenceline in Chatham. When I told him of les Amis, he claimed interest in attendance to a public meeting.”

Marius, with cropped sandy hair and clothing too fine for either Chatham or the communal hall, swallowed visibly, even across the hall where Grantaire sat with Joly. He absentmindedly toyed with his ruff with his left hand. Grantaire wondered if the nervous disposition was the young man’s nature or if he had never been among common men before this confrontation. Grantaire narrowed his own eyes when he realized the young woman naturally stepped back into the shadows, obviously accustomed to young Marius taking automatic precedence over her.

“I am Baron Marius P-Pontmercy, lately of the Gillenormand Estates of Barbados, returned to seek my father’s fate, now that I have achieved majority. I have good reason to believe he or his estates are or were in this district and I might find both my paternity and good fortune in green England, rather than among my grandfather’s peers in the Caribbean,” he said with a notable accent, completely oblivious to the hall’s reaction to his words.

Enjolras exploded with the righteousness worth of avenging Michael himself. The candle light glinted off his golden curls even as his face reddened to match his jacket, discarded on the chair behind him. “A baron and a Barbadan slave lord both? What would you have to do with les Amis, we who know the justice of equality and egalitarianism and the grave since you fine nobility commit trangression and sin against the body of Christ not granted titles at birth? And who is this woman who hides behind you? Have you dared bring a slave among the New Levellers?”

Still not comprehending that he was beyond his understanding of society, Marius motioned to the young woman. “Oh? This is Eponine, she is my private servant. She has been my only company since leaving my grandfather’s estate.”

Grantaire leaned forward, bracing his arms on the table for all that they ached from work and old wounds. Courfreyac could not have actually questioned the young man before bringing them to the hall or, else, perhaps he thought that a member of the hated nobility could truly be reformed and shown the sin of their ways. If he imagined Grantaire’s cynicism and body of sin could be cured through work and devotion, he may be so idealistic as to think they could convince a baron to open his lands and provide for the very men and women he crushed under his heels. 

 

Enjolras extended his hand out to Eponine, open and gentle, just as he did to every new member of their merry band. Taking her dark hand into his pale one, he welcomed her. “Eponine, I hope that you are a free woman and have not been forced to take your master’s name, but even if you have, you are welcome among the Amis. If you should join us, you will know no more masters, no labor not taken out of free devotion, and the meat, drink, and clothes due to every child of God. I am Enjolras and you have a place among us, equal to all and servant to none. If you have been in Barbados and not seen the sorrow of our wars, we might find a woman to show you our ways, should that make you more comfortable?”

 

Eponine tentatively reached for Enjolras hands, her eyes wide saucers of honey wine. When she spoke, it was a lilting accent completely unlike Grantaire’s northern burr or even Bossuet’s dulcet Anglo-Cornish. “You are kind, Master Enjolras, but do not insult Baron Pontmercy so. He is a kind master. Since entering his service, I have always been fed, always been clad, and never worried about shelter.” She smiled and Grantaire thought there was something of the wolf about her. “He never even reported me when I stole his primers.”

 

Behind her, the baron blushed crimson. He clearly had not expected a trusted servant to shame him for his indulgences in a hall of common men, but he made no move to stop her. Enjolras, however, became as cold as the wind in a Welsh winter. Grantaire knew the look all too well; it was most often directed at him, particularly when he indulged too heavily in ale or fell behind in the toil of the field. He did not release Eponine’s hand.

 

“Bossuet!” he snapped, “Is Musichetta with the women’s meeting in the common house?”

 

Bossuet, who had been playing at jacks with Jehan nearby until the commotion with the baron, cocked his bald head to think. Grantaire, even after all this time, was unsure of the unlucky man’s relationship to Joly’s wife and, for the sake of his own curiosity, had decided he must be the pretty woman’s brother. It would be too like the kind physician and his wife to take in ill fated Bossuet who, if it were not for the Amis, would surely be one of the unfortunates destroyed by either war or enclosure. Les Amis surely saved so many of them, providing what family and nation refused.

 

“I will fetch her,” he said after a moment, his bald head cocked to the side. “And I will explain on our return, so that she will know what to do.”

 

Enjolras watched him leave and then turned his ire on Marius. “There are no good masters for none who truly love would put himself above another man - or woman - and call himself superior. It is the greedy, the prideful, the wasteful who would destroy not merely a nation but those who they would call less. For even Christ himself said blessed are the poor, blessed are the meek, and blessed are the merciful. No slavelord could know mercy and remain as such. No baron can bless the poor with one hand and destroy the livelihood of his people with the other. ‘You serpents, generation of vipers, how will you flee from the judgment of hell?’”

 

Grantaire bit his lower lip and shifted uncomfortably in his chair, pushing all of his strength, what little he had, into concealing his own true nature now. After all, he already had enough reminders of the consequences of his nature etched into his hide, but Enjolras in a holy rage, Enjolras the avenging angel, Enjolras as Christ against the money lenders, was worth another hundred days under the lash and unforgiving sun. Enjolras, who gave everything to the people and the world and God, the only holy lord to whom he submitted, made Grantaire’s sorry, sinful existence worth the pain of life and the eternal suffering of Hell.

 

Marius cowered a bit under the onslaught, looking first for solace in Courfreyac, who was unable to offer safe haven, and then appeared to begin to weep. “I am… I am not a viper or Pharisee. I am an orphan, seeking my father’s lands and fate. He fought as a Cavalier under Charles and when my mother passed of malaria, Grandfather Gillenormand fled to Barbados. I have had no control of my fate or my name.”

 

“This is the argument of a child,” Enjolras said, his face softening ever so slightly. He crossed his arms again, the pull of his shirtsleeves emphasizing his shoulders. “You are no Pharisee, but a fool. I will scold you no further, for it is a weak man who finds power in towering over a child or making a woman weep. But nor do we take in children or fools amongst us. If you find yourself hungry, in need of clothing, or beset by third, we turn no one away.”

 

Marius, eyes red and damp, opened his mouth in another protest when Bossuet returned with Musichetta, who swept into the hall with a whirl of blue and gray skirts. Grantaire quite adored the doctor’s pretty Continental wife and had actually had her sit for a portrait in the summer, when the cold did not cripple his hands into useless claws. Now, though, her face was unusually serious and she immediately went to Eponine, intent upon her task.

 

Eponine brightened when Enjolras released her to Musichetta and Grantaire supposed that a servant girl might not find a man of Enjolras’ intensity a better prospect than her weeping master with lax laws. He had never been to Barbados or further than Egypt and the Holy Land, but everyone in England knew the rumors about what happened in Barbados, its reputation for cruelty, rapine, and torture. What the nobility of Barbados did to their servants and slaves, if only half the rumor were true, was enough to turn the stomach of a decent man and cause a parson to lose his faith.

 

The two woman appeared to come to a quiet sort of agreement, Musichetta resting her white-capped head briefly against Eponine’s, and they left the common hall, hand in hand. Grantaire made a note in his mind to approach the new woman, in daylight and without the pressure of being surrounded by strangers. Women tended to instinctively know his nature and he could reassure her that Enjolras was no threat to her, but only to the nobility and injustice they rained on England. Yes, he would be sure, in the end, that no one here would fear him so much as know to love him.

 

“Baron Pontmercy, I suggest you find lodging in Chatham, as you will not find your place here among the New Levellers. We cannot take on those who cannot make their decisions for themselves, age of majority or no.” Enjolras was calmer, but no less imperial. “There are several widows who take on lodgers, especially if you can name your father and his origins to witness your reputation.”

 

Marius, crestfallen, made his way through the tables to the door. Even his fancy ruff seemed to droop. Before opening the door, however, he turned and met Enjolras’ eyes. “I know Grandfather Gillenormand sheltered me and protected me from the world, lest I meet the early fate of my parents, but I am neither fool nor a child. I have true interest in your work and wish there were those like you in Barbados. Even if you will not yet take my word, I will find you and I will keep learning - about my father, about the Levellers, and about what, exactly, Fortune has in mind for me.”

 

*

 

Grantaire lay in the dark on his straw mattress in the attic of the common house and wondered. Sleep often only crept up on him in the small hours of the morning, only to flee at dawn, so he spent much of the night with naught to do but think. Grantaire often thought, especially in the darkest hours of the cold night, that he ought not to be left alone with his thoughts. His thoughts were like nothing more than great, fearsome, dark birds who would nest in his room and peck at his mind when he was alone in the dark.

The low attic had been offered to him almost as soon as Courfreyac pulled him into one of their public meetings. Joly, as his new physician and advocate, insisted that the air would be better for him. Musichetta told him he would have space for an easel and that the light from the southern window would be perfect. Enjolras had glared at him and told him he ought to pray, given that he would be closer to God. Combeferre had watched him with eyes that knew too much and said something quietly to Courfreyac that made him laugh.

 

Many of the les Amis shared rooms. It was part of the philosophy of the Levellers and, thus, les Amis as well. Joly and Musichetta generously shared their space with ill fated Bossuet and Combeferre and Courfreyac shared the desirable room behind the common kitchen, even though it was roughly the size of a broom closet. In fact, Grantaire knew that the only other member of their merry band who did not happily share sleeping space with at least one other was Enjolras. He occupied the northern garret room, citing the quietness for his writing.

 

Enjolras, the fearless leader of the leaderless sect, drifted across Grantaire’s mind, as he often did in the dark silence of his cold attic room. Here, alone and unseen, he could truly think of him. Here, where none could see him and ask what pretty maiden brought that look to him eye, he could think of the golden man, Apollo incarnate. Here, he did not risk the lash, the stocks, and the noose.

 

Shuddering under the rough wool blankets, dark memories replace lustful thoughts of an untouchable preacher. He had never done anything where someone caught him; this was the only reason body and soul remained together. Grantaire knew this too well. The minister had been very graphic about what would happen to his body and then his soul in Hell when he had spent those long days in the stocks. His body already ruined, Grantaire had much to look forward to when he was finally caught out.

 

He would be caught. This was an inevitably, set out by fate and the vengeful God of Calvin. Grantaire was as sure of this as he was that les Amis would eventually be routed by the New Model Army - or Javert, if he could figure out how. He wore his heart on his sleeve and his feelings on his face. The New Levellers probably did not believe in the noose, but nor would they allow him to stay among them when he finally slipped and lustful adoration became an open thing, rather than a ghost he attempted to hide in the attic.

 

Then, what? He could take to the fields and lanes as so many of his fellow countrymen did. With no place left in the army and too old to apprentice to a new trade (and with ruined hands that would not make art), he would have nothing to do, no livelihood by which to eke by mere existence. A beggar in the streets of Leeds or a landless peasant in the Midlands, neither promised a long or happy life. While in Paris and Milan, he had heard of houses of ill repute where one with enough money or a powerful name might procur whatever he so desired, female or male, or beyond, but he could not believe he would stoop so low as that, if England even held such places.

 

No, this space, this family with les Amis was a temporary reprieve in a world that could not and would not forgive Grantaire for his nature. If he still believed in God he would believe himself to be another Job, laden down with proving the worth of faith and devotion, but any faith had left him when the lash caught his wrist, cutting to the tendon, when all he could do was scream. No, there was no loving, distant God waiting for His children to show Him heed. There was only the darkness of the night and the cold of the wind.

 

Sometimes, on bad days, on cold nights, on those nights when his hands just did not work and he craved charcoal and oil paint, on those days when Enjolras made him all too aware of how useless he was, Grantaire thought about leaving. He did not believe in their faith. He was no part of their sect. When the cold and the damp set in, he was next to useless, unable to provide the common people with meat, drink, or clothing, unable to till the land or man the loom. He could set off for Manchester or Bristol or even London herself, prepare himself for a slow, hungry death as an urban beggar. What use was it to put off the inevitable in the end?

 

Every time he tried, however, Joly or Courfreyac or Jehan would find a way to hold onto him. Jehan would delight him with a new distraction, a new book on politics or the goings on in London and Paris, a leaf of poetry. Joly would forbid him to go, as his physician, and then put him on bedrest for a week to help the melancholia. Courfreyac would take him back to the shared meeting hall and regale him with stories of when he, Enjolras, and Combeferre first joined with Gerrard Winstanley and the shame they brought on their families.

 

Enjolras, who loved it when Courfreyac brought new friends and travelers into his meetings, who gave pamphlets to Joly’s patients when they came up to the house, who preached with the charismatic glory of Peter and Paul, never tried to stop Grantaire from leaving. He would watch him, knowledge of Grantaire’s shame in his eyes, and only say, “Every man must make his own life. Only God himself can judge.”

 

He rolled over, to where the straw was less lumpy, and tried to push thoughts of Enjolras out of his head. He was a room away, in his own bed or furiously writing his newest thoughts at the cost of tallow candles or oil. He could go to him, on his knees, and beg and beg and beg. Enjolras was just a man; he might give in for a night or two. Grantaire bit back a moan at the thought of Enjolras, his avenging archangel, indulging in wickedness and sin, allowing Grantaire to sully him and make him of the earth for once.  He imagined so many times what it would be like to be allowed such indulgences and sin.

 

He moaned again, for a different reason this time. Enjolras, of all people, would never allow for such sin and immoderation in his house or to damn his soul. Enjolras, the orator, the preacher, Michael bearing the wrath of God, would never permit such profligateness. Should he even suggest intemperateness of that nature, Grantaire would be sure to become another wandering, friendless peasant in the cold English rain.

 

*

 

They had cleared a section of forest that the viscount had once used for deer hunting and Grantaire and Bahorel had been assigned the arduous task of tilling the soil to prepare for planting. He thought that Combeferre, who was the former gentleman farmer in charge of the planning of provisions, had mentioned something about winter wheat, but Grantaire was not privy to plans nor had he any insight into farming practices. He was merely a set of hands that could be put to work, most of the time.

 

The field, set deep into the enclosed estate, was relatively safe from the prying eyes (and vicious hounds) of Javert.Javert was not the viscount, who was somewhere in America claiming new lands to keep under lock and key, but the man of the law who harried les Amis on his master’s behalf. As far as they were knew, for the time being, he was unaware that Jehan and Courfreyac had dismantled a large section of the southern wall and they would be able to get back to their work feeding and clothing the people of Chatham. 

 

Grantaire had not revealed to his comrades that Javert struck genuine terror into his heart. He would never shirk his work or suggest that he, their own outsider cynic, should not work the land as they all did. However, Javert, the wolf, terrified him and he lived in dread for the day when one of his hounds would take him down. He worried more for the day when he discovered the truth of Grantaire’s past and used it to destroy les Amis.

 

Leaning on his edger, Grantaire gasped as his back ached where the scar tissue pulled and resisted his work. He needed to do this, to prove he was worth keeping without joining their radical sect, to show he was better than his nature. Looking up, he saw Bahorel far ahead of him, driving his edger into the virgin soil with vigor, singing as he worked.

 

Bahorel was a mountain of a man, muscled from the field labor he so enjoyed as well as dancing and boxing, when their time allowed. He was skilled at his work and had left his corduroy jacket hanging on a tree branch, preferring to labor in his sleeves and waistcoat. Grantaire long suspected that he was often assigned field work with him because Bahorel could easily make up for what Grantaire lacked.

 

“Grantaire, that’s enough, you shall cease your work.”

 

Startled, Grantaire looked up to see Enjolras on the edge of the open glade with an all too familiar face next to him. While Enjolras’ golden hair shone in the sun, even as his dark jacket and waistcoat absorbed it, the red-haired man beside him was unmistakable. He had not known Feuilly well during his short time in the New Model Army, but the amiable tradesman was difficult to forget. The genial man always knew his compatriots better than they knew him. This was the beginning of the end, Grantaire thought.

 

“Bahorel, this is Feuilly, a new friend who has lately been of great help to us in other works and wishes to do better in the world,” Enjolras continued, knowing now that he had both Grantaire and Bahorel’s attention. “He has experience with working the land, having been raised in a peasant farm outside of Lindhithe, so he will hereafter be your partner in field work. Feuilly should be competent and able. Combeferre estimates this field should be ready once we finish serving dinner this morning in the village.”

 

Grantaire could not bring himself to speak. Enjolras and Combeferre knew his history now and he was no longer even competent to till a field on borrowed land. He would be sent away in shame and ill repute. Of course, it was Enjolras, his pure and untouchable avenging angel, who would be the one to send him away.

 

“Grantaire,” he continued in his impossible, imperious manner. “Leave your edger to Feuilly, he will have better hands for it, and come away with me; there is business waiting for you at the house at Chatham and it will not let us tarry.”

 

Enjolras strode like the deity incarnate that he was, with no conversation or lecture for the insolent beast who had dared to sully his radical sect. Grantaire felt the ache of his back and wrists from merely two hours preparing a field for planting and decided, not for the first time, that he deserved the lash. He lacked the money or the power or the good name to get away with poor behavior and an ungodly nature. All the world agreed that men such as him were too base to be worthwhile. He tailed behind Enjolras, his eyes on his plain burgundy jacket and braid.

 

They bypassed the meeting hall, instead heading for the wattle-and-daub structure Grantaire had stolen the fortune to call his home. Right, then, he was going to be sent away without fanfare or trial. He struggled with the thought of Enjolras with a lash, punishing him for his own unfortunate self. He had no coin but some of the widows of Chatham were more than charitable, especially if they did not know why he was sent away.

 

His heart almost stopped in his chest when they enter through the kitchen door and Combeferre and Joly are seated at the rough hewn table. They were professional, impartial; two doctors and well suited to their trade. So it was to be a trial, he thought darkly. It made sense to make sure his doctor was here, to attest to his drunkenness, his sloth and gluttony, his damning lust. Courfreyac was missing, but he was a kind soul, the man who brought him to les Amis and thus Grantaire understood his lack of attendance. Combeferre, he did not know well, but he look as imperious as Enjolras in his matching blue jacket and vest, his chestnut hair pulled back at the nape of his neck.

 

Joly stood upon seeing them and reached immediately for Grantaire. “Let me see your wrists! I cannot believe that this barbarian thought you were good for field work or that you would accept your assignation. You are an invalid and recovering from malaria and melancholia! It is one thing for you to help serve the food in Chatham or hand out clothing, but your constitution is too delicate and perilous to be working at hard labor.”

 

Grantaire sighed and allowed Joly to examine him, shamed that it was so public a reminder to everyone in the room. He was a profligate fool whose drunkenness earned him a court martial and the whip. Even now, his disposition was so weak that his physician would not allow him the work expected of his class. He closed his eyes and waited for his condemnation even as Joly pushed back the sleeves of his jacket and unbuttoned his shirtsleeves.

 

“My sincerest apologies, my dearest Grantaire,” Combeferre started, his pale hands folded in front of him piously. “I was foolish and had my mind on other, less earthly topics when I made the rota this morning. I know we don’t discuss it, and I shan’t again, for your constitution and nature are yours alone, but I am aware of your recovery and I ought to have maintained my respect and esteem of you. If you have any injury from the labor to which I assigned you, I shall be your humble servant until you recover again.”

 

This shocked Grantaire into momentary silence. This was not to be a second court martial then. “I have no need for servants, but I cannot stay useless and a charity case for your cause.I have already spent too many months a mere pitiable relief. I may be broken but I am not without use nor am I without pride.”

 

“Pride goeth before destruction and the spirit is lifted up before a fall,” Enjolras quoted, but it did not sound like he was scolding. Grantaire dared that he sounded affectionate. He turned to face the blond man, admiring his spirit and faith, the very things Grantaire lacked. “But also: he that is loose and slack in his work is the brother of him that wasteth.”

 

“I have never been a man much for Proverbs or the holy word,” Grantaire reminded him. Enjolras often did that, quoting the Bible and trying to pull him into their sect, and Grantaire needed to emphasize to him that some people simply were not worth saving. 

 

“Ah, but you knew which book I was quoting,” he replied, his red lips curved like Cupid’s bow and Grantaire could not look away. “Bossuet overheard you speaking to Joly of feeling that you are a project of les Amis, that we have treated you as giving alms, rather than as a brother. If we have committed this injustice, know that it is from an overabundance of concern for the soundness of your health rather than pity or lamentation. You know Jehan is working on a children’s Bible, yes?”

 

Grantaire nodded slowly. “Even if I am drinking ale or playing at chess, I ritually attend your meetings for les Amis. Even a deaf beggar would well know your cause and your desire to expand your cause from food, drink, and clothing to education, to elevate the rural unwashed masses to a place to face the nobility and landed gentry. A fool’s errand but I am quite aware of your radical plans, not merely an English Bible but one suitable to teach children on their own.”

 

“It is hardly a fool’s errand to not only educate the youngest and most vulnerable among us, but to bring them the word of God themselves rather than rely on the authority of the adults around them. Christ is the liberator of all, especially the oppressed and defenseless. Too many of our people have been brought low and we must do the work of Christ to bring liberty and justice back to the fields of England.”

 

“What of Christ’s work is suitable for the atheist, the sloth, the drunkard?” Graintaire retorted sharply, his eyes never leaving the other man’s lips. “I am among your vulnerable and have no printing press and my wretched, broken hands are a poor choice for calligraphy. I am sure I will merely fall asleep among your vellum and you will find me, only to banish me to the stark fields from which you plucked me.”

 

“Jehan procured access to a printing press through his social connections, for more than merely printing pamphlets,” Enjolras told him. He licked his lips, causing Grantaire’s heart to race. “Our Bible is becoming a real thing, one that we can spread throughout the country, far beyond our individual work in Chatham. But a book for children needs illustration to occupy their youthful minds and you are the only trained artist among us. I recall you trained in Paris and Milan and would have you as our artist. Will you accept the task?”

 

“I would kneel and black your boots if you asked. But I am a broken artist with broken hands,” Grantaire barked, pulling his shirt sleeve to bare the ugly scar tissue that tormented him. He heard Combeferre gasp and even Enjolras, normally stoic or fiery, flinched back from the ugliness before him. “When I painted Musichetta, it taught me a long lesson in pain. Joly begged me to stop and forced me to soak my body to my neck twice a day. Illustrating a whole Bible might finish the work the whip did not finish.”

 

Enjolras made an aborted attempt to reach for his wrist, no doubt to examine the work wrought on his body. Grantaire almost wished he would, to his shame, as that would allow this angel embodied to touch him without sullying him with damnation. Instead, Enjolras took a step back and lowered his head.

 

“You could, actually,” Joly said, suddenly winning all of Grantaire’s attention. “Jehan’s press includes etching. You can take all of the time necessary to ease your pains, but once the etching is complete, we will keep them forever. There will be no need to reproduce it; the press will do the work for you. Too, if the actual etching is too much, another member will transfer your sketching to the plates. I have seen you sketch many an evening while Enjolras entertains us.”

 

He would have blushed, but the thought of truly making art again and sharing it not just among friends, but with all the world nearly brought Grantaire to his knees. “Truly, sketching hurts less. You would do this for me? Truly?”

 

“You are doing this for us; it would be a gift to grace a Bible with your work if Musichetta’s portrait is a sample,” Enjolras said, looking past him to meet Combeferre’s eyes. Something unspoken passed between them and Combeferre nodded. “Joly said you are trained in intaglio and deems you well enough to work now. If you illustrate and Jehan writes, children all over Britain and Ireland will not only read eagerly, but have access to the Word of God.”

 

Grantaire did finally fall to his knees and gazed up at Enjolras, level with his boots where he belonged. He truly was Divine, a gift from a distant God who finally deigned to look down upon the Earth and somehow chose to bless a ruined drunk with a second chance. “If you have returned art to my unworthy hands, I would do anything for you. I already would kneel to you, son of the sun. Now I will beg.”

 

Pulling Grantaire to his feet, Enjolras grinned at him. Grantaire thought his heart would burst as the heat of the other man’s hands hot and welcome through his sleeves. “There is no need for melodramatics; we have enough with Bossuet and, though we all love him dearly as family, we need not two of him. I will not quote Bible verses at you, our own atheist, but know this: the Lord is generous and gives generously. You are an artist, thus you shall make art and this can still be your passion and Calling. Come, Combeferre will show you where the etching plates are.”

 

*

 

It was not perfect. His hands ached whenever the weather turned wet or cold. If he worked too long or too hard or bent his wrists just so, his hands shook with palsy and he would be in useless agony for days. He was unable to use the mordant himself; the whip had stolen his once deft touch from him.

 

But he was making art again and Grantaire, for the first time in an eon, could say he was proud of what he was doing. He could handle the plates and set the wax. He spent hours working on sketches of classical Biblical scenes to perfect them. Jehan wanted two plates per book to engage the children and that was more than enough work to keep Grantaire occupied for months.

 

He refused to follow the books in order from Genesis to Revelation but followed his own inspiration, as Jehan was still working at simplifying the works to suit children. His first sketch was of Christ in the temple with the whip, a figure of awesome fury. His back ached in sympathy for the money changers and Christ bore a resemblance to Enjolras Grantaire would be shamed to deny.

 

When Jehan lathered him with praise for the sketch, he dared draw David and Jonathan for his second. His heart was in his throat as he sketched out a youthful, beautiful David crouching behind the rock, accepting an older Jonathan’s cloak. Bracing his aching right wrist with his left hand to support the torn tendon, he added details to David’s sandals and Jonathan’s curls.

 

“Samuel is one of my favorite books.”

 

Grantaire dropped his pen and gasped as his hand spasmed. Turning from where he was hunched over the table, he saw Enjolras standing just behind him. The man wore an embroidered burgundy jacket with white hose that made Grantaire want to etch 132 plates in honor of Enjolras. He flushed that the preacher found him sketching David and Jonathan behind the stone.

 

Enjolras stepped forward and peered at the sketch. “David and Jonathan, am I correct? It is good to show the children the value of such friendships. Upon meeting, the soul of Jonathan was knit to David’s and they are the best example of true male comradeship in the Bible until Christ took on his disciples. Instead of competing for the crown of Israel, they became heart friends and England aches for such a lesson today. I do hope you shall make a similar plate of the disciple Jesus loved?”

 

“I admit, I have not yet planned how I shall handle the plates for the Gospels,” Grantaire admitted when he found his voice. “I do not desire them to be repetitive and wish to enhance what each Evangelist has to offer the children. I will need to see how Jehan interprets them, I think, before I will know quite how to depict his Christ.”

 

“How can you say that when you have already begun?” Enjolras asked, pulling a print of Grantaire’s Christ in the temple from inside his waistcoat. “Everyone is overjoyed at your first print. Courfreyac and Combeferre have begun suggesting you illustrate a primer to go alongside the Bible although I think that may be too much work for you and Jehan.”

 

Staring at his art in Enjolras’ hand and agog at the unexpected praise, Grantaire struggled to control himself. “But how? I did indeed complete the sketch yesterday, but I am a  ruined man. I spilled the mordant when I was pouring and near ruined the table, much less the sketch and plate.”

 

“Indeed you did,” Enjolras agreed evenly. “However, you always seem to forget that you are no longer alone in this world; you are an Ami, a friend to the Great Work. Joly may have intervened and forced you into plasters and bedrest, but your art was not abandoned. Did you not wonder where it was when you came into the hall this morning?”

 

“I… No,” Grantaire admitted. “I did not. Jehan was already here when I arrived and wanted to consult about handling the Books of the Law for the children. I was distracted and then…” He trailed off and looked down at Jonathan fondly gazing down at David. “I thought I might do better should I choose my favorite stories from your book.”

 

Enjolras’ fair blue eyes widened, clearly surprised, but he smiled as he asked, “My dearest Grantaire, I thought you were an atheist and a cynic?”

 

Keeping his eyes on his art, Grantaire replied, “I do not believe in your Great Work or Great Father, but I am not a fool. I am educated. I have been to London, Paris, and Rome. I have seen the palaces and ruins of Athens, Jerusalem, and Cairo. I have seen the horrors wrought by you holy fools who will kill for the so-called loving God of yours and I have heard of what once brought Geneva to her knees. I served under Oliver Cromwell. If you think I have never read your Holy Book, have never pondered what drives you and they and all men under the sun to madness, you have underestimated what kind of man I am by far.”

 

Flushing red to match his jacket, Enjolras apologized. “I shame myself. I know you are an educated man and I shame myself to know you only as you are recovering now. I would to have known you as a student of great art or even as a soldier. You have greatness in you and I know your experiences have brought you low. Of course you know the great stories of the Bible, any artist must.”

 

“You still have not explained the print,” Grantaire said, pointedly avoiding Enjolras’ apology. He was a cynic long before he left mainland Europe and only brutal mad men would be the kind of fool to follow Cromwell given his state. His life was a series of bad choices and he merely suffered the consequence. “I no longer possess the skill to pour the mordant and, while that be a small part of my work, I know of no one else who is trained in the arts. You, I know, studied the law before taking to Winstanley and taking your friends with you. Jehan is quite the poet but even he professes to have no knowledge of my practices.”

 

The strange smile returned to Enjolras’ face, gracing it with a beauty that made Grantaire wary. “How would you like an assistant, one who can take the steps you cannot and is in need of appropriate work?”

 

“An assistant?” Grantaire blinked. “You cannot expect me to take on an apprentice, not in my state. And who would take me as a master? I am a wreck, a ruin to my body and reputation, cannot even attach my name to my art. I would be a curse and a destruction to a young man! Please do not burden an apt young man with me, if only for his sake!”

 

“There is no young man and you will be master of no one,” Enjolras told him, emphasizing the word master. “We are a society of equals and if a young man is of age to leave home and learn a trade, his voice is equal to my own. However, it was the young woman who Courfreyac brought with the baron, Eponine. She will not say how she has the skill and I will not press a woman for her mysteries. However, quite early this morning, she came to myself, Combeferre, and Courfreyac as we planned our day and gave each of us a print. When I remarked how good it is and that I look forward to more, she requested I approach you and offer her services as an assistant. She says she is no artist herself but can make herself useful.”

 

“The Barbadan?” Grantaire asked, cocking his head and remembering only seeing her when she came into the common hall for the first time. He dimly remembered her, but distinctly recalled Enjolras throwing the young baron out of the hall. “I recall when Musichetta took her away, but I do not know that I have seen her since then. I assumed that she had left our merry band and had returned to her master.”

 

“No,” Enjolras’ face darkened and Grantaire prepared for one of his great speeches. “No man may own another, no matter what they call their vile, sinful practices. Eponine is an independent woman, apparently of great, if hidden, skills. She has been quiet and, I think, more than a little wary of us so we have left her alone unless she approaches. I do not believe all of what she told us about fair treatment with Pontmercy and Gillenormand, however it is hardly my place to demand the history of another.”

 

No, Grantaire thought, Enjolras and les Amis did not demand the history of others. Even Joly, his physician and friend, never asked Grantaire for more than he was willing to share. He had seen his body and worked him through the pain, the melancholia, the suffering, the malarial fits, but even he never asked why. If the Barbadan serving woman had been ill treated on that island, a thought so automatic he shuddered, knowing the rumors that flew  through England, les Amis would be a place of healing and acceptance for her. Enjolras might be an avenging angel and a force of nature as powerful and direct as lightning, but he had a kindness in him and the others more so. If they were willing to take on Grantaire and able to return art to him, this would be a good place for a wary, newly independent woman.

 

“Will you take her on as your assistant?” Enjolras pressed when Grantaire did not speak. “I know it is not traditional to have a woman as any but muse for your arts, but she has the skills we lack and desires a place among us. With your hands…”

 

“Yes, with my wretched hands, I can only be half the artist for you,” he replied bitterly. “I am sorry my poor choices make me ill to serve you. But yes, I will take on the woman, not because I am a woeful cad, but because I know the worth of having a rightful place among you and I know that art can heal.”

 

“Wonderful,” Enjolras smiled at him, truly smiled, and something glowed in Grantaire’s hollow heart. “I truly did hope you would say that. Women, too, are the children of God and thus, apt to the skilled work we treat the lot of men. She shall join you tomorrow morning.”

 

Grantaire did not speak as Enjolras walked away and vainly attempted not to stare at Enjolras’ legs in the white knitted hose. Somehow, he felt like something was changing and he did not know what it was. It gave him apprehension and not a little bit of dread. When situations changed and went beyond his control, Grantaire was usually the one who suffered for it.

 

Ah, well, he thought, as he turned back to his sketch. At least demise at the hands of Enjolras and les Amis would involve more shouting and less evisceration than his previous experience. He hoped. He had yet to see truly violent tendencies in their little movement and he knew violence intimately by now.

 

*

 

“You must rest,” Joly insisted, leaning on his cane more heavily than usual. The physician had found Grantaire at his table, clutching his wrist wear the tendon had not properly healed, tears in his eyes from the agonizing pain. “You have been overworking yourself and you will relapse very seriously if you continue to do so. Malaria is a very serious malady and I know this was not your first bout.”

 

Grantaire looked up sharply at that comment, his eyes shining. “I never told you that.”

 

Joly smiled gently and put a jar of liniment on the table along with the bandages Grantaire favored for their softness. “I am a physician, my friend, and, by all the rights, quite a good one. Malaria is common enough disease on our fair isle and relapsing malaria is clear, when one knows one’s patients well enough. Since you live in the attic above my own rooms, I would be a poor doctor, indeed, if I thought this was your first time fighting the disease. May I also assume you went without treatment, previously?”

 

Grantaire studiously avoided looking at the doctor and applied the liniment to his wrist, rolling up his sleeve to access more of his arm. The ointment stung when it was first applied, but it had worked miracles on him since Joly developed it. “Some among us are opposed enough to Jesuit bark that they will allow good men to die. I have watched it happen and watched them writhe in their febrile death throes. If such things are allowed to happen to good men, a man such as I have done nothing to deserve it and, too, they believe the stuff to be damning.”

 

Joly’s eyes narrowed as he helped Grantaire wrap the soft linen bandage around his arm. “I have heard the faith of such men and rarely have they the education, understanding, or mere humanity to be the determiner of who should receive medicine. And, besides, if God has put a healing plant on earth that might ease the sufferings of His children, then we ungrateful fools not to use it.” He paused for a moment, considering his patient. “I do hope this is not your way of confessing that you have not been taking your quinine.”

 

“Everyone has had their quinine, even myself,” he reassured the good physician. Joly was known to overworry when it came to his patients. They were Joly’s flock as much as they also belonged to Enjolras’ fiery preaching. “You are my friend and my physician. I would do nothing in my power to pain you if I have any ability to avoid it. In any case, I am the atheist and I care not whether a tree belongs to Rome or Geneva and only whether it can hurt, heal, or kill.”

 

“Oh, Grantaire,” Joly replied softly. He ran a free hand through his dark hair, loosing it from its ribbons. “You are too harsh on yourself and think yourself too bitter. You must rest. I insist. Three days away from the table and allow Eponine to do the work, whatever she is able. If you do not, I shall tell Combeferre and Enjolras that I have banned you from the writing table until the next Sabbath night and do not doubt for a moment that I will do such a thing and they will enforce it.”

 

Grantaire knew quite well that Dr Joly was a force of nature and when he was fierce and determined to heal and soothe, Grantaire learned very quick to acquiesce and obey. “Very well, but I do not know how I shall bide by my time without my work. I have become quite accustomed again to being the artisan, though I suppose I might drink away my days and loudly reminisce of the terrible days of yore. However, I also suppose that my physician would advise against such abuse of my humors.”

 

“You jest with the truth. Neither drunkenness nor sloth will help with your maladies, nor improve your spirit.” Joly was smiling now, emphasizing the crow’s feet at the corner of his eyes. “No, I have a suggestion already, at least for today. I was seeking you out, not to scold or heal, but because Bossuet, Musichetta, and I are going into Chatham today and wish for you to join us. Mummers have arrived and are guising a play.”

 

Grantaire felt his eyes widen with shock. As a child, he had adored attending guising and watching the mummers, masked and dancing, making merry.  “But I haven’t seen an actually guising in years.”

 

“I think we may have been giving the people of Chatham hope alongside food, drink, and clothing,” Joly said dryly. “Now, as your physician, I am prescribing you an afternoon in the sun, watching the mummers play and enjoying yourself. None of this has anything to do with my terrifying wife and what she will do to me if I do not remove you from your work.”

 

Grantaire followed Joly out of the common hall with little reluctance. The enticement of a play and an afternoon enjoying the autumnal sunshine was too much, even for him. He had had so little in the way of enjoyment and friendship, rather than vice and competition in this world. Perhaps les Amis were better for him, as well, although he was rather beyond hope.

 

Musichetta was as beautiful as ever, a gem glittering in the autumn sunlight, in an embroidered gray wool dress with a delicate lace collar and her hair tucked under a matching linen cap. Bossuet, next to her, was dashing with a red cock’s feather in his cap, covering his bald head. They truly looked ready to attend a play, a real play at last, and Grantaire felt shabby in his old green jacket and worn brown breeches.

 

“Grantaire!” Musichetta sang out when she saw them leave the common hall. “You must escort me to the mumming! These rascals will abandon me in a moment to have their sport, so I rely on the galant Grantaire to protect my honor in the city.”

 

He had to smile at that. Joly adored his wife and Bossuet his sister; there was no chance that they would abandon her. In any case, Chatham was hardly London and Musichetta was known to all there. “You would take the immoderate wastrel, an atheist in God’s green England, my lady?”

 

She took his hand as they walked, her olive skin soft under the callouses of his fingers. “You know I hate to hear you speak so poorly of yourself. And illness is hardly immoderation, unless I am very poorly mistaken on the meaning of the word. This is a fine autumn day and we are not needed in the fields. Stand by the side of a woman who cares for you and watch the mumming. Bahorel caught some rabbits in his snares this morning and I have heard rumor that Fantine makes a fine cassoulet.”

 

Grantaire could not think of a retort to that. Fantine and Jehan often handled the finer tasks of preparing food for the larger band. Fantine had been raised in the kitchens of one of the greater houses in Oxfordshire and often claimed she only followed Enjolras to Winstanley and then onto this one to be sure the young man did not starve. Jehan acted as her kitchen maid with great success.

 

Chatham did not have anything like a theater and no one had built a stage for the play. Instead, the town gathered on what was left of the common green, with the mummers in middle. The man was dressed all in white, with silver and copper bells around his legs and so many brightly colored ribbons streaming from his body. His partner, a man in a matching white dress with bells and ribbons, danced next to a giant hobby horse as they sang. As they frolicked wildly, bells ringing and ribbon streaming, the bright red hobby horse lunged and snapped at the villagers surrounding them.

 

Grantaire found himself laughing and clapping along with the rest of the villagers, feeling festive and joyful for the first time in so very long. Musichetta laughed on his arm and joined in, pulling Joly and Bossuet with them. They began to sing along with the old traditional songs, cajoling the great hobby horse and mistress in her dress. It felt like family and loyalty and happiness and home and Grantaire’s heart swelled in his chest as he sang along with the villagers.

 

The joy and song froze in his throat as he saw Enjolras and Combeferre laughingly dodge the snapping jaws of the red hobby horse. They were arm in arm with Courfreyac, as beautiful and fearsome as always, Enjolras in his fine dark red jack, Combeferre and Courfreyac in matching blue embroidered wool. But instead of standing as missionaries, as the evangelists helping the poor, the needy, the starving and the naked, they stood as friends enjoying the mumming. He had never seen a preacher, a speaker, a person religious who did not at the least disdain of such frivolity, of such idolatry. But here stood Enjrolas, laughing and ducking from the hobby horse’s snapping jaw, his long curls rolling over the shoulders of his fitted jacket, enjoying the plebian joys of the common people.

 

Joly was immediately at his elbow, his hand wrapped around him. “Grantaire, is all well? Are you having another moment? Is it too heated or cramped for you?”

 

“No,” Grantaire whispered, not desiring to worry his friend over his health when it was simply the sight of Enjolras acting as a man and not a god that kept his breath in his throat. It was no fault of Joly’s that he found it more profound to watch his avenging Michael take delight in the idolatry of the peons below him, the peasants to whom he devoted his calling. “It has just been so long since I have seen anything such as this.”

 

“You have become used to austerity, my friend,” Joly told him gently, pulling him toward the play acting, attempting to engage him in the mumming and singing. “The world is not so grim and cold as some would have us believe. There is joy and warmth and even love to be had.” He glanced back at Musichetta, saying this, who sang while holding Bossuet’s hand. “There is liberation and wonder yet to be had. This is why we are here.”

 

And somehow Grantaire, the drunk, the cynic, the atheist, the libertine, found himself in a village surrounded by friends, playing along with mummers at a play. He sang along with everyone else, the great old folk songs he had not sung since he had left Dover for his studies in Paris. He danced with Musichetta when Joly allowed and took Bossuet as a partner. And his eyes never left the blond angel across the common who did the same with Courfreyac and Combeferre.

 

*

 

Eponine made a remarkable assistant. She was quiet, determined, and never intruded upon him when he was making sketches, but always forced him to allow her to do the hard work his hands could no longer do. She made him an artist again and never allowed herself the honor of acknowledging it, which gnawed at Grantaire endlessly. 

 

He could see what Enjolras saw in her, that first evening when she arrived in the common hall with the baron. She was fierce and determined and so sure that she wanted to have her own place in the world that Jehan, the poet and writer, took to calling her his Little Wolf. Grantaire could not bring himself to take such liberties with the Barbadan woman, not when she was so newly free, so new to England and to them, but did his best to give her thanks in his own fashion.

 

“What are you working on now?” she asked, peering over his shoulder as he said at the table. “I do not know how you and Jehan keep a track of yourselves. You do not follow the books chronologically.”

 

“Should we? Is there entertainment in following the Good Book chronologically?” Grantaire asked, shifting to show her the sketch, Ruth leading Naomi on a donkey back to Jerusalem. “What say you of this?”

 

Eponine pondered the piece for a moment, her teeth a flash of white as she bit her lower lip. “It needs more detail, make it truly yours. What happened to yesterday’s work?”

 

“Too Romish,” Grantaire dismissed. “I was trained in Paris and Milan and they unduly influence me. I too dearly love Michelangelo and Botticelli and their ilk; I was a century too late and a thousand times too incompetent to compare. But I dearly love them and learned from their students and it is inappropriate for an English Bible to represent such things to our children.”

 

Making a dismissive noise, Eponine leaned on his shoulder. She had a tendency toward such fondness and familiarity with himself and Jehan, although Grantaire had noticed she was still wary of the other Amis, especially Enjolras. With them she was circumspect, the very wolf Jehan named her. She spoke softly, her words weighted by her lilting Caribbean accent. “We might not be idolaters and I can hardly call myself a fair English maiden, nor should I necessarily ascribe myself to the worries of an Anglish leadership, but do not the young girls of England and Britain deserve a woman to aspire to be? And who better among them than Mary?”

 

“Romish,” Grantaire repeated. “It’s good enough and remarkable enough that they would take on an atheist and a broken one at that. I must prove my value as more than a patient and charity case and much of that is making sure that the art I produce is both worthy of the children of Britain and beyond and of the liking of those guiding three. Even though Enjolras is unorthodox and Courfreyac friendly to all, I cannot imagine they or, Combeferre above them and a doctor of medicine, would approve of Romish imagery in their holy crusade.”

 

“It is Enjolras’ opinion that drives you,” she said softly in his ear, her lips brushing against him, sending shivers down his spine. “I have seen you watch him over supper and when he comes to inspect Jehan’s work. You can admit it to me.”

 

Grantaire looked sharply to wear Jehan was struggling, still, with the Books of the Law and not listening to them. The transcriber was a man of whimsy, with a pair of asters braided into his long red hair, but Grantaire was all too aware that the preacher chose him to transcribe the Holy Bible for good reason. He turned to face his assistant, whispering harshly. “Do not say such things. I am what I am but I would not that any might know even if I am a poor actor. I am wounded enough as it is; I could not bear the punishment such things warrant.”

 

Eponine rolled her eyes expressively, a mannerism she was fond of employing whenever she thought he or Jehan were in the wrong. “I told you I am no innocent English maiden. I am Barbadan, where men, especially men like you with education and bearing, take whatever they please, damn the law of gods and men. Marius may be a sheltered hothouse flower, but I am not. If the worst you have to offer is desire and shrink from force, then.” She paused and shrugged, her shoulders bunching up under dark wool. “I have known worse: men who sell their daughters to slavery, a man who would have forced your beautiful man, men who believe only in rapine, slavery, and the indulgence of their own wickedness. Yours is no mortal sin, my friend.”

 

“There are no mortal sins, for all sins damn the soul,” Grantaire parroted without thinking. Then he sighed, turning back to Ruth and Naomi. “This is why I am an atheist. What god would damn his supposed beloved? Nae, I will not and you will not speak of this. If I lose my place here, and surely I would, none could tolerate me if they knew, I am not long for this world. I have failed at all else and here, I have a second chance.”

 

“Les Amis are more forgiving than that,” Eponine protested, sincere as she had ever been. “I saw that from when Musichetta first took me aside to the women’s house; she explained their work and their beliefs to me. You must see that, for all that the Three have fire in their hearts, it is there to warm the souls and bodies of those being crushed by the powerful, not to burn them. Your place is secure. They even give you your own room in the house Combeferre and Coufreyac built; do you not see what an honor that is?”

 

“I am ill.” He stretched out his arm to show his palsy, as his arm shook from weakness and pain. “Joly must have insisted upon in. I was nigh out of my wits when Courfreyac found me at the inn and half carried me to the common hall. I recall making quite the witty speech about how their aims are mighty but doomed to fail in this cold, empty world that any deity has long abandoned to sin and damnation before falling on top of someone. I woke in a strange bed some days later with Joly asleep in a chair beside me and there I have remained for none have told me to leave or go elsewhere.”

 

When Eponine opened her mouth to speak, Grantaire lifted his hand to silence her. “No. I will not speak of this again. I know you see me as a man of bearing and education and, perhaps, at one time I was. But I am nothing of that type any longer. I am a degenerate, a libertine, an atheist, and I do not have the money nor the good name to bear such things, if anyone ever does.”

 

Collapsing a little bit, Eponine turned back to the sketch on the table, resting her hand over his. “I think if you thicken the lines of the city gates, it will be more visible in the final etching. I can see your training in how you make these, but children will delight in thicker lines that will engage their young eyes. Once, I had several younger siblings and when I drew for them, those were their favorite.”

 

“Once?” Grantaire asked absently, as he followed her directions. It felt satisfying to make such art again, but he knew he was out of the habit and her eye was good. She made him a better artist by the day.

 

“I am Barbadan, where I have seen men sell their daughters into slavery,” Eponine said darkly, in a tone that let Grantaire know this was all she would say of her past and he was sensitive enough about his own not to press it. “There, Naomi is fond of Ruth, show it in her face.”

 

They worked quietly for a time with the afternoon sunlight angling through the large windows. Jehan occasionally consulted them about the appropriateness of a certain law or particular turn of phrase. It was cozy, familial, and domestic. Grantaire felt his heart grow dangerously soft, looking at Eponine prepare the mordant. No one had ever tried to comfort him over his secrets before now.

 

The quiet bliss was shattered when Bahorel slammed the door to the hall open. “Clear the table! Someone get Joly or Combeferre! Now!”

 

Grantaire and Jehan immediately pulled their tools and work from the table just as Eponine ran, presumably to find one of the physicians. Almost as soon as they cleared the table, Fueilly, with the strength of the farmer and soldier, carried a blooded Courfreyac over his shoulder and lay him gently on the table. Grantaire gasped when he saw the man’s wounds, freely bleeding over what had just been his workplace. The wool of his jacket and trousers were torn away and what had once been white hose were now crimson with freely flowing vital fluid and gore.

 

“God’s wounds,” Combeferre gasped from where he stood in the doorway, with Joly and Eponine right behind him. His face was drained of blood and he seemed almost frozen as he stared at Courfreyac. “What happened?

 

Joly pushed past him, using his cane to propel himself forward, and immediately began examining Courfreyac. His long, skilled fingers parted the torn breeches and rolled the wool away from the wounds. He looked up to the red haired Feuilly, his clothing stained with his comrade’s blood. “Was it Javert, Feuilly?”

 

The large man nodded. He looked at Combeferre when he answered instead of Joly. Combeferre remained frozen in place, his noble face as pale and stiff as the linen of his necktie and shirt. “I was on the far side of the field and did not see him coming. Javert came with those godawful mastiffs of his and Courfreyac went down under them like a rabbit under a wolf. Normally I love hounds, but I have no problem doing what needs must to save him.”

 

“If he can be saved,” Combeferre said in a painfully small voice. Grantaire felt that he was viewing an agonizingly private moment he ought not to be privy to, but the table where Courfreyac lay between himself and the door. “I have seen what a hunting hound can do to a child or prisoner. I, too, was once a doctor.”

 

“It is not so dire,” Joly told him firmly, in a voice of unyielding authority. He knelt and reached for his black physician’s bag. “They did not get to the bone nor break it. I suspect he is swooned from the pain and loss of blood, but he shall not lose the leg. Eponine, fetch me clean water. I must clean him before I poultice him.”

 

Combeferre looked comforted at that and joined Joly at the table. While Joly clearned and treated his patient as a physician first and a friend second, Combeferre cradled Courfreyac’s head in his hands and spoke quietly to him. Grantaire looked hesitantly at Jehan, who merely gazed at Courfreyac with concern.

 

“You must be Grantaire!” Feuilly said quietly, leaving the physicians to their work. The stout redhead turned his back to the table and Grantaire remembered he was never able to stomach the barber surgeons who walked among them after battle.“Jehan, you must introduce to me to Enjolras’ mysterious artist he hides away in your halls, away from town and the viscount’s fields.”

 

“I belong to no one and no one hides me,” Grantaire protested, surprised that Feuilly was not citing their shared history and his crimes. “I have merely been given a second chance and one I do not deserve. I have not seen you at our meetings nor have I heard your name called for the rota.”

 

“Jehan, for shame!” Feuilly replied, but did not seem put out. He glanced worriedly at the table where Eponine had returned with water and Joly was washing his patient, but continued. “And shame Enjolras, too! For where do you think your printing press came from? And who do you think is the only fool in country indiscreet enough to print Enjolras’ papers?”

 

“You are no fool,” Jehan said earnestly, a pansy falling out of his braid and onto the floor. “You are our friend, an Ami, and you do well by us.”

 

“I had not thought to ask and more shame to me,” Grantaire told Feuilly, grasping the other man’s weather hardened hand. “For you have given me my art and my living back and for that I will forever be in your debt. I seem to be in everyone’s debt with no money to pay.”

 

Courfreyac moaned loudly, a sound of agony and pain, and their conversation was cut short. All turned back to him. The water in Joly’s bowl was as dark as wine and Grantaire’s stomach turned. He knew, all too well, what that did to a man and, despite Joly’s reassurance, what that could mean for the body.

 

“Cour, Cour,” Combeferre said, using an unfamiliar nickname, as he held the injured man down while Joly attempted to poultice the wound. Courfreyac rocked his head back and forth in Combeferre’s hands, his long chestnut curls tumbling into the other man’s lap.  “It is only Joly. We are safe in the common hall and I am here. I am here and you are safe.”

 

Again, Grantaire felt as though he ought not to be privy to whatever it was he was watching, though no other moved from the hall. He thought for a moment and chose that when Courfreyac woke, he would offer any empathy the other man needed. He was no physician but he knew Courfreyac might not lose the leg but that did not necessarily mean he would ever be able to employ it for use again.

 

Bracing himself against the table, Joly pulled bandages from his black physician’s bag and began to wrap the awful, bleeding wound. “Courfreyac, Courfreyac, listen to me. Combeferre is going to take you to your room and you will rest. In no more than an hour, one of us will come bring you weak broth and you must drink it. You have lost much of your blood and your humors need replenishing.” He stood and looked to Combeferre. “Go. I know you know what to do.”

 

Grantaire watched Combeferre carry Courfreyac in his arms with a decided gentleness and care and was once again amazed by les Amis. He had never known any, even in his own family save maybe his sister, who would have offered such softness to a friend. At least, whatever happened next, Courfreyac was surrounded by friends. He would not become a beggar or starve or lose his home even if he was cursed to never walk again or bring another friend from the inns and hostels of the countryside.

 

*

 

“This is why we must fight!” Enjolras was afire, alight with fearful passion. His blue eyes blazing, he paced in front of the common hall like a caged animal. Once again stripped down to his vest, shirtsleeves, and white linen neckerchief, he was a force of nature, a spirit come to avenge the fallen, an angel charged with the will of God. “These elite, these powerful, these men believe they have not only right to our land and our resources but our very bodies themselves!”

 

The hall was crowded with both men and women. All loved Courfreyac and many demanded a full meeting upon learning how he suffered at the hands of Javert. Grantaire sat on a pew bench, wedged tightly between Musichetta and Joly, across from Jehan and Eponine. Marius hovered by the door, still unsure if he were welcome, but clearly concerned for a man he called friend. There were others, too, who Grantaire did not know and must have been from town: stern men in large hats, weathered women in dark woolen dresses, even some young men with their long hair showing their politics. 

 

“While today, Courfreyac was the victim of Javert and his hounds,” he continued, his voice cracking on his friend’s name. It was notable that, tonight, he stood before them alone, without Combeferre or Courfreyac flanking him. Grantaire was struck by the sudden desire to paint him as St Stephen, the idolatry and Romism that it was. He would be beautiful and he would be struck low, as all men eventually fall. “It could have been any of us. It will be any of us. They drive us from the land, steal what little we need to survive as men, and then, when we rise up, when we take back what God Himself has provided for His children, they try to steal our very lives! We cannot stand for this! If we fall back now, surely it will only be so that Javert and his ilk will hunt us down like deer in the royal forest.”

 

“Will Courfreyac live?” Bahorel asked from where he stood by the door with Feuilly. The big man seemed likely to hunt down Javert in his empty manor should the answer be affirmative. Grantaire believed he would; he was a man of committed action and fierce loyalty. Under his broad felt hat, the ire in Bahorel’s face would cow any man. “Or has the bastard murdered one of our own, freely and without consequence of the law?”

 

Enjolras stared at him for a long moment, frozen as Michelangelo’s David and just as beautiful, before shaking his head. “I cannot speak to his disposition at this time. I am not his doctor.”

 

Just as he said that, he strode toward where Grantaire sat in his pew. Bending, he helped Joly to his feet and waited for Bossuet to provide his cane, allowing the physician to lean on his taller body for support. “At most times, I would oppose Joly sharing any of our personal information with the larger group, however this is not most times. Javert has gravely wounded a beloved friend and,” he paused and looked over the crowd. “In the effort to prevent an unseemly riot, Joly, if you would share what you may to quell our well founded fears?”

 

Then he took Joly’s seat in the pew and Grantaire was all too aware of the heat of his body through his hose and breeches. It took his breath away when, as Joly gingerly made his way to the ambo, Enjolras grabbed his hand and leaned in closer. In a low voice, so none other could hear, his breath hot on Grantaire’s cheek, he asked, “Do you wish to be here?”

 

Grantaire pulled his hand back, wounded to the core that the other man  thought so little of him. “I may be a cynic and an atheist, but I am a loyal friend. I saw him as Joly treated him only hours ago and I know what it is to become broken at the hands of another man.”

 

“That’s what I meant,” Enjolras started, his face still far too close to Grantaire’s, but then Joly began to speak. Enjolras fell silent and turned away without finishing whatever he did mean by the insult.

 

“I am sure that the rumor has already made it over the river,” Joly said, leaning heavily on his cane. Grantaire had only ever seen his so exhausted and overworked since he had himself been in the wild throes of fever. The doctor’s face was as pale and worn as the bleached linen of his necktie. “Courfreyac was in the field today, ensuring food on every plate, ale in every cup, when Javert released his dogs on him. We are all lucky that Feuilly was with him and fully capable of wresting him from the dog’s jaw. He is resting now, under Combeferre’s watch. While only God knows our true Fate, this ought not to be the end of Courfreyac, though the recovery shall be long and arduous.”

 

Taking a deep breath, unsure if it was the right thing to do, if it was his business at all ask, but Grantaire felt he needed to know. His heart had been a tight hot thing in his chest since he had seen Courfreyac’s mangled, blood leg on the table where he drew David and Jonathan, his friend broken at the very place he had been given a miraculous second chance. “Good doctor, shall he walk again?”

 

A hush fell over the crowd and he felt, more than heard, Enjolras gasp at his boldness. Grantaire knew he was out of line, then, and regretted his question. He was the libertine, the cynic, a charity for les Amis to soothe back into something resembling health. He could feel the eyes of the room train on him and became quite aware of his scars, his palsied body. He was the last person in the room who ought to have questioned another’s ability to get by, much less one so beloved by all as Courfreyac.

 

Joly closed his eyes, as though pained himself. “That lays in God’s hands, not mine. Courfreyac is indeed lucky he did not die in the fields today. I have seen a mastiff take down a man in his prime. We shall support him and, God willing and with no infection, yes, he may yet walk, perhaps with a cane as I do.”

 

Noise rose up at that and Grantaire realized he had opened the floodgates, if unknowingly. Courfreyac was cherished by all, indeed he was often the man who brought them to their merry band and such a precious gift was never fully forgotten. We all owe a debt to him, Grantaire thought. We all owe a debt to him and now we may never have a chance to repay him.

 

“I meant no disrespect,” Enjolras said suddenly, turning to him again and taking advantage of the minor chaos. “Jehan reminded me today that sometimes I am thoughtless and I reflected that yes, I am unceremonious but not without thought of my friends. I know you were there today when Feuilly came in with Courfreyac and, well, given your history.”

 

“Given my history, I would abandon a dear friend because he was unfortunate enough to be discovered at work with Javert?” Grantaire retorted, not caring how sharp his words were or how breathlessly close he was to Enjolras. “I may have deserved every lash of the whip, I may have earned every punishment your God has placed on my path, but Courfreyac has not. I ask his condition so that I might help, if only so that he is not the only broken man among us.”

 

“This is what I meant!” Enjolras grabbed his hand again and refused to release it or break eye contact, his wild blue eyes boring into his with his ferocity of passion. “I worry that this will throw you back into melancholia, not because you lack love for Courfreyac but because you do not. I know not the ordeals you have endured and I will not ask for gifts I am not due, but please do not let Courfreyac’s suffering increase your own. No man has earned suffering, certainly not you and not all you have undergone.”

 

This gave Grantaire pause. He had not known that Enjolras esteemed him so. This avenging angel avenging him was unexpected and entirely unearned, inappropriate particularly when he thought of him so. The preacher would never sit here, hold his hand, praise him if he truly knew what kind of creature Grantaire was. He spoke quietly, so none other might hear his painful confession. “You are wrong. You who see the good in all, who believe in equality, who believe in our right to facing our superiors as fellow children of your loving God. I earned myself a court martial and I earned myself the lash, because one does not receive either of those things without earning them. My luck is that I was cursed with malaria and not the plague, lest I join my family in the earth sooner.”

 

Enjolras bit his lower lip and Grantaire’s heart leapt in his chest. He noticed that the other man still held his hand in his own. “You are unduly strict upon yourself, Grantaire, and none other. I do not understand you, but there are some things I do understand. All of God’s children need love. All upon the earth need food, drink, and clothing. None deserve the disdain of others or prevention from following upon their own fate.” He paused. “And none deserves pain or suffering. It is not something any of us deserve. It sorrows me to hear you say such a thing.”

 

“I have earned worse, this is a mere reprieve,” Grantaire said before he could stop himself. It was too much, revealing what must remain forever hidden. He heard it in Enjolras’ startled gasp. “Forgive me, I overspeak and center this conversation on myself rather than Courfreyac. All the more reason I am the last one among us you should concerned yourself upon.”

 

“No one has deserved what you have endured,” Enjolras repeated firmly. “Much less can anyone earn more.”

 

Grantaire closed his eyes; he could not bear that Enjolras see him as something he was not. Enjolras saw a man, broken but ready to try, a true man, a soul worth saving. He was none of these things and he might die of a broken heart when Enjolras saw him as he truly was. “You cannot truly say such this, my good man, if you have not even heard of my crimes.” He pulled his hand back into his own lap. “And I would not tell, for I would not have you or any of the Amis gaze at me with the contempt any good man would, should they learn of my true nature. I will not sully your cause with my dirt.”

 

“Oh,” Enjolras murmured, clearly taken aback. “I had not realized how true and deep this was. I would have said otherwise had I truly known.”

 

Grantaire stood. “I would ask that this conversation remain privy, but I know, too, that I have revealed parts of my history that the others may require. I am sorry, sorry I am the sort of man that I am, but I think I must depart. I cannot do this and… I would have that you allow me some sort of sleep before you make your decision about me.”

 

When Enjolras did not speak, but only gazed at him with the quiet steadiness of a marble statue, something inside Grantaire broke down, broke in a way he no longer thought possible. Without thinking, only feeling, he left, left behind Enjolras, les Amis, the common hall. And if he went to his little attic room, it was only because he had no other room to go.

 

*

 

He took his boots off and set them at the foot of his bed, and then draped his jacket and hat over his bedside chair. He climbed under the blankets without shedding his waistcoat or changing into his nightshirt. Grantaire did not know what would happen next, but he strongly suspected he would want to be fully dressed when it happened. He stared at the sloped garrett ceiling, wondering, as he always did, what would come next.

 

His mind drifted to the wars, the poor, the suffering. Grantaire was a man who had seen the great beauty of the world, studied at the Sorbonne, travelled among the great artists of the Continent. He had also seen the great suffering of the world, that terrible paradox. He had fled more than one city, escaping plague and the pox. He had seen the horrors of war and the dread things soldiers inflicted upon those too weak to stop them. He had seen the wonder that was Winstanley, that les Amis took further, the revelation that was the equality of man, the miracle of finding such a thing in their damning Good Book.

 

Grantaire was no fool, no matter how much he was still a sick man, still often in the grip of malaria and melancholia by turns. Even having seen the small miracles the Diggers and les Amis could work on a small scale, the world was built for horror. The pox, the plague, starvation of the weakest, exploitation of the poorest, the ravages of war, slow and early death: these were the fates allotted to the majority. He was chilled, even under the warm wool blanket, thinking of facing his Fate so soon. So alone. Whatever reprieve he had been given here, he had foolishly thrown away with rash words with Enjolras. 

 

Enjolras. He thought of Enjolras, all golden fire and avenging righteousness, believing truly in his loving God and virtuous Cause. Only a man such as he could give up a promising career in law, connections to Oxford and Parliament, and turn to a life of preaching and working amongst the poorest of the poor. Only a man of righteous conviction and learning - and a certain attractive naivete - could believe that the tale of Ananias and Sapphira could translate to mean that all peoples of the Earth had right to food, drink, and clothing - and now an education. Sometimes he wondered if he was more attracted to Enjolras’ wild, untameable soul, so full of hope and firm belief, so unlike himself, or if it was his ethereal, otherworldly beauty with that tumble of golden curls and unreal eyes like water off the coast of Sicily, so unlike his dark and broken body.

 

He nearly was ready to take himself in hand, to indulge in the forbidden, when there was a tentative knock on the thin door that separated his little room from the larger attic. Grantaire fell frighteningly still, pretending he was not there. Enjolras would not be so hesitant; Courfreyac would be unable to ascend to the attic; he doubted Combeferre could be driven from Courfreyac’s side long enough to castigate and banish him. Was it Bossuet, come to commiserate in ill luck, yet assure him of his exile? Was it Eponine, dark and beautiful, prepared to admit she was wrong about the openness of their little band?”

 

The door opened, the hinges creaking loudly, and then shut softly. Grantaire remained still on his pallet, his eyes firmly shut. His Fate was coming, arriving fast, but that did not mean he needs must look its messenger directly in the eye when they gave him damnation.

 

“Oh, Grantaire,” Joly said softly, his voice as gentle as it had ever been when he was in the worst of the throes of fever. “Please do sit up. I brought you a warm mug of ass’s milk flavored with saffron. A recent Neapolitan treatise suggests it is good for sudden bouts of melancholia.”

 

Of course they sent his physician, Grantaire thought, groaning to himself. Joly, who was always kind to him; Joly, who always treated him as a friend first and patient second; Joly, who held his Hippocratic Oath above even his faith in God; they sent Joly because they knew Grantaire would not be able to resist them. Moaning aloud, he forced himself to sit up, seeing where Joly sat in his wicker-backed chair, holding a steaming mug of milk.

 

“Enjolras is quite concerned,” Joly continued, handing him the mug with the clear expectation that he would drink it obediently. He moved Grantaire’s hat and jacket and sat upon his chair, his cane leaning against the bed. “Mid-meeting he found me and told me that you are experiencing a severe, sudden attack of melancholia because of what happened to Courfreyac and near ordered me right out of the meeting to find you. He is troubled that something drastic might happen and almost ended the meeting early. I was forced to assure him that this is to be expected and I would seek you out immediately.”

 

“He needn’t fret,” Grantaire murmured into his milk. It was warm and frothy, tasting of sweet grass and cream. “This is no fit of melancholia. I do not have fits. I have made terrible decisions in my life which have led to worse outcomes and I made another terrible decision in telling Enjolras of my past. Surely that is not a frenzied attack, but a pattern of behavior I can map from failing to flee Milan when I ought to have only to end up in the heart of Sweating Sickness. I can trace it to choosing to study art at the Sorbonne as an untutored Englishman to joining the fool military to impress my drunkard of a father, only to follow in his own footsteps.”

 

“Grantaire, cease, cease!” Joly ordered, grabbing his free hand and taking his pulse at the wrist. “You will strain your spleen with the black bile! I am happy Enjolras recognized what was happening and found me immediately. I cannot have you flagellating yourself like this; it is unhealthy and you will make yourself worse if you continue!”

 

“Ha!” Grantaire jested, finishing his milk. “If only I were the one who flagellated myself!”

 

“Yes, Enjolras mentioned that as well,” Joly replied, sitting back in his chair. “I hope he did not overspeak of information you only intended for his privy thoughts, but he worries so about you and it is hard to keep him from speaking at times. He said… he said you told him that you earned the lash, that he suspects that what has scarred you so?”

 

Grantaire could not meet his physician’s eyes. Instead, he stared at rough wool of the blanket covering his legs. “I know you have seen my back when you stripped me for hydrotherapy. You, of any man alive, have seen more of my guilt and shame. Have you not guessed what happened? You have witnessed the aftermath with your own eyes.”

 

“I would never presume such things. I am a physician, not a peasant spectator at such an event. I guessed it was such a thing,” Joly confessed. “However, you are a man of the world, more perhaps than any among us. You studied and worked on the Continent; you have fought with more than one army. I know you have been as far as Greece and the Holy Land and I know you have been in plague cities and among the ill and dying. I know not how you would obtain such scars, nor.” 

 

Joly gave a long pause. “I have heard tale of men who take such scarring upon themselves willingly, especially among the Papists, that there are men who will take the lash upon themselves or beg a brother to bloody their own bare back for them. I know you have lived among them, more than we have despite the monarchy’s reforms, and I would not judge you for taking on the customs of those around you. Artists, after all, are known to be of a mercurial nature and take up the customs of those exotic cultures wherever they find themselves. Should this have been something you desired, or, at least, willingly took upon yourself, I would not shame you for following your own desire and fate.”

 

Grantaire gaped at him, honestly shocked by such a concept. “I was a wandering artist, taking commission and patronage as I could find it until the plague became too dangerous a threat even for such a fool as myself. I was hardly a black cassocked priest, beating myself to save the people pain! I am far too self conceited to do such a thing to myself. I can abase myself; I can shame myself; I can humiliate myself in front of those I esteem most. I cannot, however, imagine bringing this kind of ruinous self destruction upon my body, the body upon which I depend for my art and my living.”

 

“Ah.” Joly steepled his fingers and looked grossly serious. His soft hazel eyes were steady and, despite himself, Grantaire could not find any judgment in the doctor’s face. “I apologize for assuming that you may have desired what you have experienced when, according to Enjolras, it has caused you immense distress and may have created your melancholic imbalance. In attempting to be an impartial physician, I relied overly on texts and treatises I have read from the Continent and less upon your own reports as your patient. I apologize that I have failed you and do understand, should you wish to take on Combeferre as your person physician instead. He is more than equipped for the task and may be more understanding of your needs.”

 

Grantaire was gobsmacked. At least when he was introduced to les Amis, when he was first taught what their goals and history were, he had been suffering malaria and could blame much of it on febrile hallucinations. He touched his own forehead, but felt no sweat or unwanted flush. “Joly, you must know I would trust no one with my secrets nor my health more than you. You have done more to nurse me and protect me from relapse than even my own mother would have done. You thought me more worldly than I am, thought I might have, in some way, desired the body I have been given rather than suffered wildly to be punished with my brokenness. What sin is there in thinking highly of your friends and esteeming your patients? No, I shall not go to Combeferre when I have you. If you would keep me when you know me to be a criminal who has earned my suffering, that is.”

 

“Oh, Grantaire, I am sure Enjolras attempted to disabuse you of this notion and I am not the charismatic that he is, so I shall not try,” Joly said, with a voice of despair. He frowned, deepening the crows feet at the corner of his eyes and increasing Grantaire’s feeling of eternal guilt. “However, I have information Enjolras has not and, too, I have the permission to share it, if only with you because you, too, are beloved among us. Would it help your melancholia to know that you are not alone among us with this punishment?”

 

“No,” Grantaire said immediately, thinking upon the merry little band following their charismatic three. Certainly those three - Enjolras, Courfreyac, and Combeferre - had held stations about such punishments before leaving to minister to those most in need. He had seen Bahorel shirtless in the fields on more than one occasion, his broad muscled back a visual temptation away from Enjolras. But Feuilly, whom he scarcely knew despite their shared service, could have been a serving boy in a cruel house or to a barbarous master as an apprentice. Bossuet, who had the worst luck of them all, could have had a bad stint in the military or with a failed apprenticeship. Marius, the wilting flower of a baron, grew up in a wild and dangerous colony, one where, as Eponine said, the men had no respect for the laws of God nor man.

 

“Cease,” Joly said again, reaching for his hand and drawing him from his spiralling thoughts. His hand was soft and warm, a welcoming grounding point in a cold and fearful world. “Your brother and sister in arms are Jehan and Eponine. Jehan, our kind and gentle poet, was not the best student in his house and some of his masters were exceptionally unkind. His legs bear the worst of it, which, thank God above, does not prevent him from writing and inspiring us all. Eponine, though, is like you and came to me, asking to tell you, should you ever ask, when she saw your wrist. Before Marius took her, in Barbados, her masters had been… barbarians.”

 

“Jehan? But he is so compassionate, sweet tempered. And Eponine is loyal and fierce. I cannot imagine either of them earning such a punishment,” Grantaire wondered aloud. “Even in the military, this was for the worst among us, not the best. I can understand my own sins, but they would not deserve such things.”

 

“If I am to channel Combeferre or Enjolras, it is not for men to judge us, for those in power have shown incredibly poor judgement,” Joly told him, patting his hand gently. “I would also fair well say Eponine would say the same of you, for she was in a rage on your behalf that day when I gave her the liniment for her back. Jehan was quite incensed on her heels, that day when your wrist failed you and you smashed the plate - oh, not at you, but on your behalf. He knows well what it is like to agonize for another’s moral failing. You have company. You have care.”

 

Grantaire collapsed back against the bed, unmindful of the empty milk mug rolling over his blanket. He had never imagined such things. He had never thought that the three artists - the etcher and his assistant, with the poet - would share more than their work. They were upright, true believers. They were kind, thoughtful, and devoted. He never imagined.

 

“Rest, Grantaire,” Joly said, rising and padding to the door, his cane tapping reasurringly against the floor. “I see now that Enjolras was right and I am thankful he sent me after you. I shall send Bossuet to soothe your ears with his viola when you are working from now on. I will not see you overworking and I suspect it will be good for all you to balance your humors.”

 

*

 

Bossuet truly was a wonderful viola player. The airs he would play filled the common hall as they worked diligently on the children’s Bible. Grantaire had underestimated the amount of work Jehan had taken on, reinterpreting both the Old and New Testament for children just past their primers. He was also sure that Joly was the one choosing Bossuet’s music because every air, sonata, and concerto was deliberately soothing, calm, and easily redirected them back to their work when they became too distracted or agitated.

 

Grantaire did not share that Joly had given him his colleagues’ secrets to him when he hid in his room, in a fit of pique, afraid that Enjolras would rout him as so many before him had. Instead, he tried, as best he could, to be kinder and more observant. If these wonderful people had suffered as he had, he could offer empathy, support, try to take on their burdens as best he could.

 

He was quieter as he sketched, more observant. He watched as Eponine would not keep her back to anyone, not even when Musichetta or Fantine came into the hall to fetch something for their spinning and weaving. Her shoulders would tighten and hunch when Marius visited and argued, usually loudly, for the rights of the peerage with Enjolras and Combeferre. On those days, he would suggest they take the art outside, where the light was better.

 

Jehan was someone different entirely. Though they were working side by side with the children’s Bible, Grantaire had not known him as anything but a poet, scarcely more cut out for manual labor than Fantine. Now, though, he watched as he put asters in his long red braid and stood to work, on those damp, wet days when the pain was worse. He loved Psalms and Proverbs and struggled with the hard books with a vengeful God, worrying what lessons he was providing the children, as their sole interpreter. His soul was as gentle as Eponine’s fierce. 

 

Enjolras had taken to working on his pamphlets and sermons with them in the common hall since Bossuet was assigned to play the viola to soothe the melancholia out of Grantaire. He often wondered if the other man was so distressed over Courfreyac, who was healing slowly, that Joly prescribed him his brother-in-law’s music as well. He kept well away from them, never interfering with the work on the English language children’s Bible, never asking for advice on his next sermon. Grantaire became accustomed to looking up from his art and seeing Enjolras’ tumbled blond curls bent low over the table by the door, his black felt hat ever on the table beside him.

 

“I am not amending the Book of Psalms,” Jehan told him one day, when the cold English damp was encroaching, warning them of the impending winter. Most of the Amis were hard at work in the fields and pastures, gathering what they could while the weather allowed. The pale of his shirt today was whimsically embroidered with ivy and dahlias, matching the detail work on his gray vest. “I apologize that this will mean more etchings for the extended length of the book, but I cannot bring myself to edit any of them out and I feel that the poetry allows for good instruction for the children.”

 

“Are you translating these yourself?” Grantaire asked, ruing that he did not do so before. He had been caught up in his own art and not inquired about the poet’s laborious work. He slipped down the bench, abandoning his sketch to come closer to the poet.

 

“No, I haven’t the talent for language nor the education for Hebrew and Greek,” Jehan told him wistfully, rubbing at his hip. This was a day where he had been standing for much of it, leaning half over the table to work. “I look to Wicliffe and Tyndale and, when they fail me, Douay and Rheims provide succor. I am no linguist, but we have the resources to provide what I cannot do.”

 

“You never studied Greek in school?” Grantaire asked, surprised. He had been a student of the arts, of course, but with the rediscovery of the classics, he was sure the academy forced all of the students to learn them. He knew Joly and Enjolras were fluent in Latin and Greek for he had spoken to them, in passing.

 

“I am a poor student, good only for poetry and passing whims,” Jehan replied, not looking up from where he was arranging the plate for the twenty sixth psalm. His small hands were deft and swift, sure of their work. “And what use has an English poet ever been? They had once banned Chaucer and surely, I am not he. No, I have not the gift of your education, Grantaire. Perhaps you might review some of my plates before we send them to a final printing with Feuilly? Surely he will review them but you might catch what I do not.”

 

Enjolras looked up sharply from his sermon at that, his face as dangerous as a storm at sea. “Jehan, you would not have been elected to literally write a Bible if you were a poor student. I have known you since we were children and having troubles with your letters does not mean you need Grantaire to edit your work. He is your artist, not your tutor.”

 

Grantaire withdrew at that, keeping his eyes to the scarred wood of the table. Enjolras was correct. He was the artist and, with Eponine helping Floreal and Fantine with the sheep, only half an artist today. It was not his business to bother Jehan or enquire about his past. He was the one ruining an education from the Sorbonne and had no matter digging into Jehan’s history when he kept his own so close to his chest.

 

Enjolras watched their table for a moment and turned to Bossuet, who had paused when they began to speak. The musician wore his usually fawn brown jacket and his hat with the cock’s feather. “Bossuet? Do you know des Prez? I think he would lighten the air in here, don’t you agree?”

 

Of course Enjolras would know des Prez, Grantaire thought miserably.  The music was haunting, beautiful, and reminded him of nothing more than Paris, when he was free to seek out artists in the Franco-Flemish school and enjoy their music merely for the elegance of their sound. It recalled a time when he was something more than a broken half-artist trapped in the rural English countryside, taken for who he had led himself to become.

 

The moment was shattered when Marius rushed into the common hall, a breathless whirlwind. His ruff was damaged and there was mud splashed all about his silken hose. He gasped, “The viscount has returned.”

 

Enjolras froze, one of the beautiful statues from Rome or Greece, when they gave their gods form in marble. The room was suddenly silent, bar the crackling of the open fire and the baron’s panting breath. “No, the viscount is in the colony of Maryland, in the Americas. That’s partially why we chose this land. He is absent, destroying both his own English people and whoever he bars from God’s given gifts in a foreign land, spreading English misery and hierarchy there.”

 

“No, his ship landed in Mersey-side over a week ago. He concluded business and arrived today,” Marius said, shaking his head. He bent half over, resting his hands on his knees to catch his breath. “He-he has made a request.”

 

“The viscount has made a request of les Amis?” Enjolras asked sharply, standing. He pulled on his burgundy jacket over his waistcoat and grabbed his hat, as though the viscount might follow Marius through the door. “What would he know of us, being lately of Maryland?”

 

Marius had the decency to blush and he straightened out, adjusting his wide brimmed hat that had come askew. “I still seek news of my father, the baron. When word came to the village that the viscount has returned to his estate, I sought an audience. If my father was a baron of the region, certainly a viscount would know his name and fate.”

 

“And the request?”

 

Hesitating, the baron leaned on the table. He paused and when he spoke, he did not meet anyone’s eyes. “The viscount has requested the presence of Lords Combeferre and de Courfreyac with Earl Enjolras at his table tonight to enjoy his hospitality.”

 

All of the blood drained from Enjolras’ face and the quill fell dead from his hand. He did not move or look to anyone else, other than directly at the baron. “Jehan, please to the fields, they must hurry the harvest faster than we expected. Do not tell anyone of this. Grantaire, please fetch Combeferre. He needs to know we are known.”

 

Grantaire left the uncomfortable common hall as quickly as his legs would allow. Of course, this avenging angel was no mere saint, giving his life to the poor, he was an earl challenging the very peerage from whence he came. Grantaire was a fool, he told himself, and always had been. The mud of the courtyard did not keep him from moving as fast as he could.

 

Upon entering their shared house, he slipped through the kitchen and rapped lightly on the door to their small room. “Combeferre?”

 

The man opened the door with a smile. He was in his white shirtsleeves with dark breeches and high boots, his blue wool waistcoat unbuttoned. Behind him, Grantaire could see Courfreyac - Lord de Courfreyac - laid out on the straw pallet, his leg swathed in white bandages.

 

“What brings you to us at this time of day?” Combeferre asked. “Not that you are ever unwelcome, but I thought you were working with Jehan today. Enjolras said something about it over breakfast.”

 

“I had been,” Grantaire admitted, resisting the temptation to wring his hands. “But Enjolras needs you. I suspect you would be coming as well, Courfreyac, if you were able. I have never seen Enjolras like this.”

 

“That is a grave statement,” he replied, suddenly serious. He ran a hand through his long, loose curls and stepped back from the door frame. “Come inside. What has happened? Is someone else hurt?”

 

“No, no,” Grantaire allowed himself to be ushered inside and led to a wicker backed chair. He hesitated, but the information was about themselves. “Marius had sought an audience with the viscount and returned. The viscount has requested the presence of Lords Combeferre and de Courfreyac and Earl Enjolras at his estate.”

 

“Oh,” said Courfreyac from the bed, propping himself up on his elbows In his pale night shirt, loose chestnut curls, and bandaged leg, he hardly looked the role of a lord. “This is not quite what I was expecting. I promise we meant no lie by not sharing our full histories with you. It would be quite difficult to do our work, should everyone know our full names and titles. I suppose Marius somehow recognized us?”

 

Grantaire never expected to have a casual conversation with a lord while sitting in his own bedroom, in the house Grantaire lived. Nothing yet in life had prepared him for this situation. “I cannot say I have been more open about my own life, so it would not occur to me to hold it against you. I am more concerned that Enjolras - my words, Earl Enjolras will have a heart attack. He asked for you, Combeferre. Lord Combeferre, I’m sorry, my lord.”

 

Combeferre frowned, his forehead creasing with disapproval. “None of that. I will go to him, to help, but if you want to remain in his good graces, you will forget now that he is an earl. Enjolras, more than any of us, truly believes we are all equal children before God and he is right.”

 

“I shall join you,” Courfreyac pushed himself up into a seated position, moving to swing his legs out of bed.

 

“No,” Combeferre scolded, pulling on his dark grey jacket and tying on a white neckerchief, looking more the country preacher than lord. He pulled his hat from a hook by the door. “You need to rest and Grantaire will look after you. Make sure he does not try to leave bed to follow me and, if you can, force some of the drawn beef tea into him. It’s cooling on the chest.”

 

Grantaire watched him go, feeling thoroughly out of his depth. He was a failed artist and  a failed soldier and primarily a failed man in the company of his superiors, both by the standards of the saints and the court. He rose after a moment and sniffed at the tea. This was the wonderful meaty aroma he had smelled that morning as he ate a breakfast of hard bread and cheese. He dared to take a sip; rich, salty, and fit for a lord. “Is he always that imperious?”

 

“Only when he worries about us,” Courfreyac answered easily, leaning against his headboard. “And do I espy an artist stealing food from the mouth of a lord?”

 

Grantaire hastily put the earthenware back on the chest and spun around, guilty. Lord de Courfreyac sat on his bed, the same straw filled pallet covered with the same woolen blankets he had had in the attic loft. The attic loft he shared with an actual earl. Grantaire could feel the blood pound in his ears.

 

“I jest, I jest. Sit down before you fall down,” the lord said, motioning to the same chair Grantaire occupied earlier. “This cannot be so much of a shock to you. You must have your own little secrets; I know you have studied at the Sorbonne. You have travelled more of Europe and even African than the three of us combined with Jehan. I will not demand it, but we have suspected you are more like us than you let on.”

 

“You think me a lord or earl?” Grantaire breathed, not quite sure what was happening. He rested his hands on his knees, unsure of how to behave before the lord who had rescued him from a roadside inn.

 

“A duke in hiding, perhaps from a terrible marriage?” Courfreyac suggested, his lips curved into a laughing grin. “Your knowledge alone, your command of language and breadth of the arts, your hidden past all suggest it. You are wiler even than we.”

 

Grantaire stared at his friend for a long, quiet moment. Lord de Courfeyac, sitting in front of him in his night clothes, assessed him. Grantaire looked down to the scarred backs of his hands. “I am not silent about my past, my lord, because I share your rank, but because I am ashamed.”

 

“And you think Enjolras is not?”

 

Jerking his head up with a snap, Grantaire stared at his friend in shock. de Courfeyac simply continued speaking, as though these were conversations commonly held among friends. He continued speaking as though being an educated, charismatic, otherworldly aristocrats was the exact same thing as a disgraced soldier and mutilated artist. For once, he was utterly speechless and in the other man’s hands.

 

“It was his idea, originally, you know. We were the elite of society, raised in wealth and luxury and wanting for nothing. The three of us knew each other since we were children, often sharing tutors. When Enjolras found Winstanley, he fell in love with his radical politics and, well, it was a sure thing we would follow,” Courfreyac explained, gesturing with a delicate, artistocratic hand. “But how hard would it be to become a Leveller while carrying the title of a peer?”

 

“So you disguised yourselves as peasant preachers because Enjolras became enamoured in a radical Protestant sect that involves taking back the land and resources from the very people you are?” Grantaire asked hollowly. He wondered, briefly, if this were an elaborate joke set up among the Three, but then remembered the shattered look on Enjolras’ face when Marius shared the viscount’s request.

 

“When you put it like that, it sounds more than inane. Do you mind handing my broth?” Courfreyac asked. He took a long sip when Grantaire gave it to him and made a face. “I would love some solid food, but Joly is worried about my humours leaking out of my leg.”

 

Grantaire just silently stared at him. Lord de Courfreyac, a title that tickled at the back of his mind like a flea, lay in bed, drinking his beef tea and chatting with him like an old friend. He was a close friend with Lord de Courfreyac and allowed, no requested to keep him company while their doctor, their shared doctor, kept him on bed rest. Something suddenly occurred to him.

 

“Please don’t tell me I’m the only one,” he begged. “Tell me I am not an imposter.”

 

This startled Courfreyac out of his revery and he patted Grantaire on the knee. “You are no imposter, my friend. To my understanding, the only others who knew at all until now are Joly and Jehan. I suppose it would be a crime to assume Joly would not tell Musichetta and Bossuet, but if they do, they have taken no action nor said anything untoward.”

 

“Oh,” Grantaire murmured weakly. “But why would you do this? We live as the peasants do and you have- you have lands and titles and servants and warm beds in your estates and no need to be on a straw pallet behind a kitchen in a wretched place I would beg for!”

 

“You sound like Combeferre when Enjolras came back from Winstanley’s sermon,” Courfreyac said with a small, fond smile. “We were out of school then, though Combeferre and I kept rooms together and Enjolras and I were at the same practice. He came to our little kept rooms, full of fire and verve. ‘Ferre thought he found a girl, but no, he found Christ in the Book of Acts.”

 

“You know how charismatic he can be. Well, he’s cultivated that in this third role of his, but he had long maintained against the inequality of society, especially with the monarchy’s aggression. His family’s fond of Protestantism, but obviously move with the tides of society. Winstanley lit a powder keg that had been building since we were children.” Courfreyac took another long sip. “He brought us to his side fairly quickly. We knew our Bible well and the argument holds, quite airtight, and brings us among the people. If Ananias be struck dead, then clearly it is our Christian duty to act as Paul instead.”

 

Grantaire stared at him helplessly. He had always assumed they had come from a better place in society; Enjolras’ angelic eloquence and Courfreyac’s ease of speech and Combeferre’s medical education all spoke to it. It had never occurred to him that the elite themselves might eschew their lands and titles for faith in a God he was sure was dead.

 

“He tried, in the beginning, to rid himself of his title, but we learned it is not so easy to do such a thing and if he attempted to formally renounce his inheritance would bring us into the public eye. As none of us has ever desired infamy, we simply… became of the people,” he finished with a lack of grace. “It never occured to me that one might think us deceitful rather than regretful. Our families did not take it well, but we were rebels whenever we came together.”

 

“It is not that. I am unworthy,” Grantaire replied. “I knew I was unworthy when you found me falling in my cups and pulled me into Enjolras’ sermon. I knew I was unworthy when Joly nursed me as though I could pay. I have been abased that you have return art and use to me. I do not know what I am now; I am not decent enough to touch your boots.”

 

He could not read Courfreyac’s look. “You have been among us long enough, have you not understood why we are here? It is because no one is unworthy. Enjolras has known that all his life, Winstanley just gave him a platform. Will you ever learn that he is truly your equal?”

 

“I am a wretch! I cannot be the equal of an angel who is also an earl! I would beg to black his boots!” Grantaire froze, realizing he had given himself away and to a man with the power to prosecute him. He might not be able to get the rope for such a confession, but it would be the stocks again.

 

“Oh, Grantaire,” Courfreyac said, almost sounding fond. He patted Grantaire’s knee gently. “There are no angels and no wretches here, only men and women. Our work, our calling is to bring that equality, the rights and freedoms, the access to resources and safety, to all of us.”

 

“You do not condemn me as cullion?” he asked in fearful wonder. 

 

“No one is unworthy,” Courfreyac repeated. “We do not believe in wretches, only those to whom the world has treated wretchedly. There is no lord among us who might, by chance of Fate, have been the lowest serf. All men are equal under God’s law.”

 

Grantaire stared at him, fearful and awful. He did not know if Courfreyac deliberately misunderstood him or if he had not so far misspoken. Perhaps all was not lost in the world, or, perhaps, Courfreyac valued him truly this much as a friend.

 

Stretching out on the bed, the lord nearly purred like a cat. “All of this sermonizing is tiring; this is why I leave it to Enjolras and Combeferre. They are constitutionally suited to it. I know you are not permitted to leave, but if you allow me to sleep, I allow you the privilege of finishing off my tea and thus fooling both Combeferre and Joly into the idea that drawn beef for a week is anything but a punishment.”

 

*

 

Grantaire had not realized that he, too, had fallen asleep until Courfreyac woke him. He was confused for a moment; he was unused to falling asleep in chair and his back felt like murder for his mistake. Then he blinked and realized he was in Courfreyac and Combeferre’s shared room. And then, like a landslide of mud and rocks, he remembered that his friends, the men he admired and followed, were members of the peerage and he remained in the muck and mire.

 

Courfreyac was still in bed, except for his hand on Grantaire’s knee, and he was blushing. His chestnut curls, normally his vanity, were tumbled about as though he, too, had just woken. “Are you awake, my friend?”

 

“I- yes, I am,” Grantaire offers, coming to his senses more slowly than he would like. He was supposed to be watching Joly’s patient, not idling his day away. “I am sorry. I did not mean to shirk my duties.”

 

“I am injured, not an invalid,” Courfreyac protested. He paused. “But I do need your help. Otherwise I would not have woken you; I know how precious sleep can be.”

 

“I am your servant, my lord,” Grantaire replied automatically. “Whatever you need, I will fetch you.”

 

The other man grimaced. “You are not my servant and I am not your lord, but I desperately need the chamber pot and your help filling it.”

 

Grantaire froze in place, not quite understanding what Lord de Courfreyac needed. He spoke slowly, not desiring to offend. “I can fetch your chamber pot from under the bed quite easily, but I do not fully understand how I might help you with it. To my understanding, using the chamber pot is a solitary activity.”

 

“Please, I’ve only had drawn beef tea for a week. It runs through me,” Courfreyac begged and it broke something in Grantaire to see him beg. “I just need to lean on you to stand. I’m too weak on my own.”

 

“Oh.” Realizing what his friend needed, Grantaire knelt and pulled the chamber pot from under the bed. He helped Courfreyac from the bed, holding him under the arm pits for stability, and averted his eyes as the other man pulled up his nightshirt. He closed his eyes and tried his best to think of other things. It had been a long time, since Paris, since Gabin, that he had been so intimate with another man and it was unfair to Lord de Courfreyac that his friends had chosen such a wretched servant for him in his state.

 

“Grantaire?” Courfreyac’s voice was weak and shook on his name, although he seemed to have completed his task.

 

“Yes, my lord?” Grantaire did not open his eyes, not know Courfreyac’s state, but put the chamber pot, now heavy, to the floor. He would be able to empty it when the lord next slept or when Combeferre returned.

 

“I think I’m bleeding again,” he said in a small, frightened voice. “I’m bleeding and Combeferre isn’t here.”

 

“God’s teeth,” Grantaire swore, opening his eyes at last, Blood was dyeing the lower bandages a bright crimson, slowly but surely. In the army, he had seen wounds like this, where the scabs fell off and instead of clean pink skin, the man began to bleed out again. “I’m not a medic, my lord. Do you know if Joly is in the fields or the pasture? I can fetch him, if you can be alone that long.”

 

“Joly is here, at home,” Courfreyac told him, wrestling himself into a sitting position on his bed. “He has refused to leave since the incident with Javert, said that if he had not been there I would have lost my leg and he won’t have me losing it now.”

 

“Rest.” Grantaire paused and pulled one of the pillows from the head of the bed. “My medic in the Holy Land always had us elevate our legs when we injured yourself. It won’t hurt while I fetch Joly. He will know what to do.”

 

Worried deeply for his friend, for wounds that reopened often killed with infection or blood loss, Grantaire passed through the kitchen quickly, scarcely taking in the warmth of the fire or the slow cooking pots hanging over it. The room Joly shared with Bossuet and Musichetta was just to the other side of the large kitchen and he prayed to a god in whom he did not believe, he prayed to the God of Enjolras who believed in life and equality, that the doctor would be in his room, reading or working on a treatise, and Grantaire would not need to seek him further.

 

Any other day, Grantaire would have knocked on the door before opening it. Even when he had been out of his head with fever, he saw how the les Amis valued privacy and a closed door, for all that everything was communal. On any day when Grantaire was not focused on blood-blood-Courfreyac bleeding on his watch-Lord de Courfreyac bleeding while Grantaire watches, he would have knocked and inquired aloud. But he did not.

 

For a lengthy breath, Grantaire did not understand the scene before him. Then, like a heavy weight hitting him from above, he realized he was watching Joly in Bossuet’s lap, their lips locked in a passionate embrace, their hands touching where men should not. Almost as soon as he grasped what he was seeing, they broke apart under his gaze.

 

Bossuet sat on a chair in his shirtsleeves and half open breeches, his bald head shiny in the light of the oil lamp on the desk. Joly stood next to him in a similar state, his shirt and waistcoat open and his trousers undone. His long dark hair was loose about his shoulders and his habitual necktie was in Bossuet’s right hand.

 

Not moving from the door, Grantaire froze in place, overwhelmed by his own thoughts and emotions. Courfreyac was bleeding again. His friend, his confidante, his doctor was like himself. But beautiful, joyful Musichetta, what would happen to her? Courfreyac was bleeding through his bandages.

 

“Grantaire?” Joly asked cautiously, his lips still bright red and swollen.

 

“Courfreyac is bleeding!” he said quickly, trying to focus on his mission and not on Bossuet’s disheveled shirt sleeves or Joly’s bare chest.”Combeferre told me to watch him, but he started bleeding again.”

 

Joly looked from him to Bossuet and back. He grabbed his black medical bag from the chest of drawers opposite the bed, ignoring his hat and jacket. “I will see to him. Just… Bossuet, talk to him.”

 

Grantaire stepped aside to allow Joly out, but was not good for anything much better than that. He was still processing what he saw, what it meant, what disaster it would wreck upon them all. He had been with a man, once, in Paris, and he had watched them destroy Gabin. He had never seen two men together, even clothed, never so intimate, so forbidden.

 

“Grantaire,” Bossuet said, grabbing his hands. “Sit down. You are pale and shaking. Is your fever up again?”

 

He allowed himself to be led to the chair - the chair where Joly sat upon Bossuet’s lap - and rested. He was shaking, he realized, looking down upon his hands. So strange, he never thought it would be like this to see two men together. He had always thought it would exotic, taboo, nothing like this.

 

“I take it that this is something of a shock for you?” Bossuet asked, after checking his forehead for heat and sweat. “I will say, we are not normally amorous during the day, but with everyone else in field and pasture and Courfreyac under Combeferre’s watchful eyes, Joly is hard to resist and we were expecting a certain privacy.”

 

“Normally?” Grantaire looked up at him sharply. Even if Bossuet were like him, and he was unlucky enough to share his nature with Grantaire, it was against law and custom to lay with his sister’s husband. “But what of Musichetta?”

 

“What of her?” Bossuet replied, his voice painfully even as he knelt in front of Grantaire. He checked Grantaire’s pulse with gentle fingers, just as Joly had done so many times.

 

“You would tell me you play love games with your brother-in-law and do not think of what it would do to your sister?” Grantaire did his best not to yell. “If you think not of her heart, though Musichetta is all heart, think of what it would do to her if you are caught and she loses her husband to the rope because of her own brother?”

 

“Cease, Grantaire, cease!” Bossuet took his hands into his own, reminding him achingly of Enjolras. “I do not know where you found such fancies, but Musichetta is not my sister. I am not related by blood to either clever Joly or the beautiful Musichetta.”

 

Grantaire stilled. “I do not understand. She is Joly’s wife and you are their constant companion. You even share rooms with them here, which is generous for a married couple to offer.”

 

“Oh, Grantaire,” Bossuet murmured. “I had no idea you were so in the dark. We didn’t speak of it so as not to upset you when you were so ill. You are such a traditional man. I see now that it gave you some flights of fancy and we should have been more honest and open from the beginning. I promise you, though, anything we did not speak of was for you and not from deception.”

 

“Is this the day of falsehoods and trickery falling away?”

 

“Did Enjolras speak to you of himself, then?” Bossuet asked eagerly.

 

“Marius spoke for him,” he replied weakly. “And thus, I was watching over Courfreyac or ought to have been, if I were any good at following instructions.”

 

“Ah,” Bossuet rocked back on his heels and looked up at Grantaire through hooded eyes. With his dark eyes and bald head, he could have passed as a monk, should any remain in England. “I shall be frank with you then and damn Joly’s worries about your delicate constitution. Joly and Musichetta may be married in the eyes of the law, but in the eyes of the Lord, as am I.”

 

Staring down at him for a moment, Grantaire asked, “What on earth are  you talking about? Have you fallen and hit your head again?”

 

Bossuet smiled grimly. “See? I knew you were not so delicate as they all worry. You were a soldier, you can handle a little wild religion. Enjolras was the one who designed the ceremony. He might make a charismatic preacher, but he is a wiley lawyer. He saw our love and wanted it to be right and recognized, if not by the Crown, by God Himself.”

 

“This is not possible,” Grantaire murmured. His pulse pounded in his throat and in his ears. The room felt as hot as baking oven in the height of summer. “Such things are not done by civilized people. Such things are against the law.”

 

“You may have noticed that we care not much for the laws of man, given that my wife is currently working with a stolen sheep herd on land that belongs to someone else,” Bossuet said with a low laugh. “That she be Joly’s wife and I be his husband only sweetens the bargain. And before you make any argument with me, take it up with Enjolras, he is the one who found the precedence and justification. I merely love them.”

 

Grantaire did not verbally respond to his friend. He buried his face in his hands and tried to breath. The world had become topsy turvy and he could not cope. He relied so hard upon knowing the rules and the consequences, even if he struggled to comply much of the time.

 

“Before Joly, soft heart that he is, returns and finds that I have broken his favorite patient,” Bossuet continued, in the same low, even voice. “I must put you to the question that none have desired.”

 

Grantaire looked up from his hands at the threat. “The question?”

 

“You are an educated man, a soldier, a man who by the rights would be questioning our revolutionary practices. We do much that deviates from society and have been routed from our homes for it more than once,” Bossuet prefaced. “You have come across a profound secret, albeit one for which I feel no shame. However, it gives you, our soldier, a power over us that makes me uncomfortable. I have never met another who came so close to the heart of our band without being offered a hint of the secrets. Will you bear this over us and report us to the religious or civil authorities to, as you said, the rope?”

 

“You are a friend, a good man; how could I do such a thing?” Grantaire asked, thinking of his own wretchedness. Was he so terrible a friend, so deplorable a man that les Amis thought he would send them to the Fate from which he ran?

 

“You are the one who threatened me with the noose when you thought Musichetta was my lover and Joly, what, my cuckold?” Bossuet did not move from where he was crouched on floor. “How would it change now that you know what kind of marriage our faith honors here? You can go back to your military officer, back to whatever family educated you, and we shall be lost. I will not be lost, Grantaire.”

 

He could read obvious threats when they are that clear, but before he could respond, Joly spoke from the door, where his shirt and vest were now properly buttoned. “While I appreciate the protection of my maiden honor, I can and will assure you that Grantaire is no more danger to us, or les Amis at large, than I am.” He turned to Grantaire. “I am sorry you discovered it this way; it must have been quite the shock. Courfreyac, who is fine, tells me that you know their secrets now as well. Today must be entirely overwhelming.”

 

“It is,” Grantaire agreed quietly. Bless Joly, who knew, despite his nature, he would never hurt them, never hurt this strange little family who took him in, never hurt the first people in the world to care for him and love him even when it could not be returned. “I never knew such things, outside of tales and romances.”

 

“Do you want anything for it?” Joly asked gently. “You have experienced a great deal more excitement today than I would recommend and have some medicines that may numb the feeling, allow you to sleep a little.”

 

“Oh yes, I would quite like that,” Grantaire said, not caring how weak it made him to admit it in front of Bossuet, Bossuet who believed him to be the kind of despicable blackguard who would betray his family and friends. “I think I should like to sleep and then awake from this fever dream.”

 

“Come, let’s go to your attic, then.” Joly took him by the arm. “But for once, I am happy to assure you, this is no dream. I just believed this would happen with your delicate constitution and I am sorry we gave you such a shock.”

 

It must be a fever dream, Grantaire thought, eagerly awaiting the impending oblivion. During the worst of the malarial fever, he had been in a near constant state of phantasmagoria. Once, he believed although judging reality from phantoms was difficult, he had attempted to attack Enjolras, believing him to be the sergeant who brought him before the court. Joly’s medicines always brought him down and forces the phantoms out of his head. He was sure they would work now, for surely the malaria had returned.

 

*

 

“I am told I owe you an apology.”

Grantaire did not open his eyes to look at Bossuet. Instead he focused on the rough wool blanket, where it scratched his neck, and the unevenness of the straw pallet, where one hip had more support than the other. Joly had taught himself how to ground himself came out of the fever dreams and it was important not to fall back into them. “If Joly has scolded you for startlingly me when my fever was up and I dreamt wild dreams, you need not bother. It is merely my weak body and not your concern.”

 

“He is apologizing because I scolded him for threatening you when you had every right to be overwhelmed.”

 

Opening his eyes, Grantaire stared at Enjolras, standing at the end of his bed, every inch the avenging Michal he had been when he spoke of Courfreyac. Bald Bossuet sat in the little chair next to the bed, looking very sorry indeed. Only Joly had ever been in his little attic room, his small refuge from the world. Having an earl and a bigamist here was overpowering in a fashion he found unpleasant.“I had every right?”

 

“You are a man of this world, a cynic, a believer in the worst the world has shown you,” Enjolras told him, as though the words had no sting. He was imperial in his burgundy jacket and hat with a white goose feather. “I have watched you, and you are man who has been beaten down by the deplorable hierarchies of this world. You have said yourself that they stole your faith, in both God and man, from you. It is an unkindness, then, to upend your world with our secrets and faith and not expect a reaction.”

 

This gave Grantaire pause, even as he lay vulnerable in bed. “You are the one who told them to keep me in the dark, not Joly.”

 

Enjolras nodded. “You proclaimed yourself a soldier, a cynic, an atheist seeking to leave a world God had abandoned. Our secrets, mine or Bossuet’s, require faith and trust. I hoped that we might awaken it in you, but it is an injustice to burden you with the extent of our convictions, if you do not share them.”

 

“I believe not in God, but in you,” Grantaire whispered. “But how can you call this faith? I have seen men of faith, men of many faiths, even Mohammedans in Greece and Jerusalem and Cairo. To lie, to commit bigamy, how can you call this trust?”

 

“I am not a bigamist,” Bossuet protested, in the same low steady voice he had used the previous day. “We are perhaps polygamists, I offer, but this is not abandonment of anyone. And it was sanctioned with no lies. You did not ask, but that does not make me a liar!”

 

“Cease,” Enjolras told him, cutting him short and resting a pale hand on his shoulder. “Grantaire, this apology is for you. You thought that you were working with, living with, a peasant band, brought together by the Word of God. This much is true. This is no lie. We simply do not share the depths of our trust in the Word with everyone, for while we follow the law of God,” and here, the Cupid’s bow of his lips twisted unhappily, “The laws of man have little use for those who give themselves fully to love and less for those who would shun title and riches to know equality with the children of God.”

 

“You don’t trust me,” Grantaire said flatly. “You have allowed me to be here as Joly’s pet project, his scheme to heal me into something more vaguely representing a human being, but you would not have me, the cynic, the drunk, the useless.” He made a noise of disgust, not knowing if it was directed at himself, Enjolras, or his vain hope that he had found a family. “I suppose it shocked you, to finally have found a soul beyond the value of saving. I suppose, too, now that I have apologies all around for being a ruined creature, incapable of worth, you will send me out?”

 

This appeared to have shocked both Enjolras and Bossuet, who remained silent before both shouting, “No!” at the same time. Bossuet then deferred to Enjolras, whose speeches were worth more than his own.

 

“You misunderstand our intentions so often; I don’t know why you stay with us when you assume hatred and misery from us!” Grantaire worried that unhappy set of Enjolras’ mouth would permanently twist it. “This is why I did not tell you and instructed the others not to speak out of turn, lest you ask specifically. You are worthy, but you think yourself unworthy. You can yourself a cynic and do not see what it is that the world has stolen from you. I desired to wait and wait for you, yourself, to come back, healthy and whole and knowing yourself the good man the rest of us can see. The scales would fall from your eyes, I hoped, and you would see yourself in the light. I did not desire it to overwhelm you, but with awe at the beauty where you walk.”

 

“You may have noticed we are not the most common kind of people in this world,” Bossuet continued. He learned forward, resting his elbows on his knees, the morning sun shining on his pate. “Joly and I found each other, or he found me, when he was training to be a doctor, long before we met Musichetta. We thought ourselves lost for the world and then, ah, the doom of falling in love with the same woman. We held ourselves apart, unable to be together, but unable to leave one another’s side. It was Enjolras’ who saved us; it is he who saves us all.”

 

Enjolras tutted at that. He always held that their little band was egalitarian and had no leader, but, somehow, he always held the banner and led the way. Of course, Grantaire thought through the haze that were his senses, he was also an earl playing at being a peasant preacher, so somehow that began to make sense. “There is clear Biblical precedent for plural marriage. Now, David is just as much a warning against the dangers of lust and power, but given that you held yourself apart, even Chrystostom would bend for you. It’s against custom but custom is to allow children to starve in the streets of every city and village in the land, custom is to break a man’s break and a woman’s heart while they beg for scraps, so I am not much enamoured with custom.”

 

“As lovely as it is to debate Chrystostom and the economic policies of Charles,” Grantaire remarked from the bed. He stared at Enjolras, painfully aware that he was an earl and an altruist and a chaste preacher and nothing like a young boy willing to play in the Parisian night. “I still have no notion what this is to do with me. I am no classical lover, no Pyramus seeking out my Thisbe. I am scarcely a man, barely body and soul held together with wattle and daub. If you be odd lovers and odder spouses,” Grantaire shrugged where he lay, “I only hope the law not find you. I would be fearful in your place, tremulous that any might look at me, or worse, my loves, ascanse.”

 

“No, I suppose you are not, though, should you find a love, you would find a wedding and a minister ready and willing,” Enjolras said, his face writ with an unreadable emotion, although his voice, sweet as angel’s song, never wavered. “What I had hoped was that in time, the scales would fall from your eyes as they fell from Paul’s, for once the world had too made him bitter. I had hoped, perhaps foolishly, that you would ask questions, inquire, and find the inherent goodness of people in the world. I desired for these tales to be a treasure for you to discover, one that would delight you, but I returned last night to learn that I hurt you as badly as any.”

 

“I am not blinded as Paul,” Grantaire replied, finally pulling himself into a seated position, admitting they were having this conversation. In any other situation, he would revel in Enjolras’ singular attention, but this felt closer to exile than anything had before. They were finally addressing his lack of faith, the fact that he had not actually joined his sect. “I am as wild as Augustine before he found his Christ and there is no end of life with stoicism and judgement for me. This world may break me, it will kill me in the end, but I will not be tamed.”

 

“Oh, Grantaire, to be saved is to be free, not fettered in a cage,” Enjolras began, clearly building up to one of his fiery, inspiring sermons. And then, to Grantaire’s eternal preservation and perpetual disappointment, he was interrupted by a gentle knock at the door.

 

“Jol,” Combeferre called softly through the door. “I can hear you lecturing, but the viscount is waiting and we must stay in his good graces, should we stay here.”

 

Enjolras collapsed, like one of those Italian marionettes with his strings cut. Ignoring Grantaire he turned to Bossuet. “If we must go up to the estate again, you will sit with Grantaire and entertain him, play him those airs he likes if he requests. You are the reason he is on bed rest again, so then you shall be his nursemaid.”

 

Grantaire sighed as he watched Enjolras leave, envying his breeches. “Bossuet, I know you do not like me very well and I am hardly an invalid for having a bit of shock. If you choose to go to your work, I shall not tell him.”

 

“Fie,” Bossuet scoffed affably. “I like you just fine. Joly and Musichetta have quite the tales of you; I assumed you were offended by who I am to them. And as for yesterday, I am protective of my family; I hope you will not hold offense to not wanting to see us hurt.”

 

Turning and smiling to face the man, Grantaire leaned back upon the wall behind his bed. Joly was the kindest man he knew and Musichetta a woman unrivaled in beauty and skill. If they were willing to risk the wrath of God and man for Bossuet, it was only his due that Grantaire spend the day learning why.

 

*

 

He did not see Enjolras again and heard from Joly that he and Combeferre were spending much of their time at the estate, negotiating and bargaining with the viscount. Grantaire considered himself, then, on borrowed time and threw himself into making the plates for the Bible faster than Jehan could interpret it. Joly was attending to Courfreyac in Combeferre’s extended absence and could not scold him or pull him from the work.  

 

Bossuet, now convinced that Grantaire was far from any kind of threat and a delight of a man, accompanied him with his viola. Now, instead of da Cascia’s serious tones, Bossuet took to scandalizing Grantaire with bawdy peasant songs. Neither Jehan nor Eponine seemed to be bothered by it, but Grantaire did not think it appropriate to listen to songs of a woman dressing in men’s clothing to follow her love to war when they were writing a Bible for children. Bossuet seemed to take a special delight in Grantaire’s discomposure. 

 

Jehan was humming along to Bossuet’s song about about a young tavern girl seeking the unknown father of her child when Musichetta came, laughing, into the common hall with an arm full of fleece. Given the time of year, Grantaire assumed that she had pulled it from the leftovers from spring sheering; Enjolras was always tetchy about making sure they would always have good, warm cloth to give away. She pulled up a chair across from Jehan and began carding the wool with a skill that came from years of practice.

 

“I thought you were directing the operations taking the herds to their winter pastures?” Eponine asked conversationally, as she carefully prepared the mordant next to Jehan. Her hands were dark and dexterous, moving with as much knowledge and skill as Musichetta. She did not lift her eyes from her thorough practice, knowing the danger of the acid.

 

“Fantine wouldn’t hear of it,” Musichetta replied, the smile obvious in her voice. “I’ve been banned from hard labor and told to keep you lot company. I fought her, though, and I’m going to be keeping up handiwork instead of just listening to Bossuet embarrass Grantaire.”

 

“Banned from hard labor?” Eponine repeated in her curious, lilting accent. She looked up suddenly, resting her hands flat on the table. “Oh, Musichetta, I’m so happy for you!”

 

Musichetta beamed, positively glowing. Bossuet put down his viola when his song ended and kissed her forehead, the most affection they showed in public, even in the privacy of the common hall in the middle of the day. Grantaire was baffled. To his knowledge, he was the only member, however ancillary, anyone had banned from manual labor and that was due to his damnable frailty. Not only was Musichetta the picture of health, she had been the architect of their herd management strategy. 

 

Eponine sighed and took pity on him. “R, she is with child. Fantine does not want to put the unborn babe at any risk.” She looked over at Musichetta fondly. “And I don’t assign her any blame either. Enjolras and Combeferre might be distracting Javert and the viscount, but I should hardly like to see you have an experience like poor Courfreyac.” 

 

Bossuet wrapped a protective arm around his wife’s shoulders. “We shall keep you safe and warm by the fire and Jehan and I shall entertain you with poetry and song.”

 

“And Eponine with her tales of far off lands and Grantaire with his art and depth of study,” Musichetta finished, turning her smile onto them. “Our three cleverest scholars, all working together to help the future generations. I only wish I could help you more.”

 

“Whose is it?” Grantaire blurted out, immediately regretting the looseness of his speech. It was hardly his place to ask such a privy question of a woman, much less his friends’ wife. He felt himself redden with shame. “I dishonor our friendship.”

 

Musichetta touched her stomach and smiled more broadly, if that were possible. Her olive skin positively glowed and a few dark curls had come loose from under her linen lace cap. She looked from Grantaire to Bossuet, who was gazing at her, lovestruck. “Whoever they are are and whoever they will be, they are ours and that is the wonder in it all.”

 

Still mortified by his his careless tongue, he was mollified by how easily Musichetta accepted the appalling insult and transformed it into a statement of pure love. He was still struck at moments, especially when it was a sentimental kiss between Musichetta or Bossuet or a too-affectionate embrace between the husbands. 

 

Principally with the latter, Grantaire found himself anxiously looking for the reactions of the others. He was continually astonished that, beyond not being horrified at the ghastly affection between men, their friends either did not notice what was going on in front of their eyes or watched them with the friendly affection typically reserved for the village newlyweds in May. He had no doubt that this child, the first among them, would be beloved by more than just his parents.

 

“I will have to ask Feuilly where we can find ourselves a cradle,” Bossuet said thoughtfully, caressing Musichetta’s hair gently.

 

“Marius has a bend for woodcarving,” Eponine offered, returning to her acid preparations. She eyed Grantaire, who had slowed in his own work, and slowed in her own. “His grandfather took a sort of pride in the decorative work he could do. It was something of a hobby or diversion among the landed and titled boys and sons of aristocrats did on the island.” She fished into her apron and pulled out a delicate wood comb, the handle a burst of tropical flowers and birds. “He made this for me, as a gift, when his grandfather put me into his service.”

 

Musichetta took the fine comb from her and examined it with Bossuet. “This is very exquisite work. Do you think he would be willing to carve a cradle for us, though?”

 

“We admittedly are not as close to him as yourself and Courfreyac,” Bossuet added. “I know he’s been visiting faithfully up at the house; Joly has said they have fascinating conversations, although he might enrage Enjolras.”

 

Eponine smiled and Grantaire was struck by how beautiful she was when truly happy. He hoped she would find a way toward happiness in her life. “Marius is like a gentle tropical flower, grown in the greenhouse and protected. If you or Joly asked such a thing of him, you would have to make sure he did not ship teak from the Orient for it. He loves easily and fiercely and has set his heart upon becoming an Ami, a New Leveller.”

 

“There are places among us even for those who cannot gain entrance to baptism by Enjolras,” Grantaire said dryly from where he sat at the table. “He attends all of the meetings and I’ve seen him in the back of the hall when Combeferre and Enjolras orate and sermonize. And, oh, give myself as an example if the tropical flower is wilting too much under Enjolras’ ire. He despises me and my atheism, and yet, here I am at his behest, illustrating a Bible for his little cult.”

 

There was a long moment of heavy silence; Grantaire was not normally so glib. Jehan looked up from where he was scribing out his book and pushed his papers toward the center of the long table. “R, do you truly believe Enjolras despises you? And for your atheism?”

 

“There are many reasons to despise me,” he admitted, closing his eyes so he would not need to see their faces. He knew Enjolras’ low opinion; he would not bear to see their contempt as well. “I am a cynic and I question his sermons. I am an atheist amongst a band of true believers. When I am not a patient, I am a drunk, a profligate, a reprobate. No, I am more than shocked such an upstanding religious sect would let me be here.”

 

“Shall I fetch Joly?” Bossuet asked, seemingly to no one. He stood, resting a hand on Musichetta briefly. “I will fetch Joly, this is your melancholia.”

 

As Bossuet hied away, Eponine dared to take Grantaire’s hand in her own gentle one. “This is the melancholia speaking. You must know, in your heart of hearts, that Enjolras esteems you highly.  He knows your cynicism comes from being thrown alone at the feet of a world too ready to beat and starve and kill and not ready enough to embrace love, charity, hope, and faith. Who would not be a drunk in such a cold, bitter place?”

 

Eponine’s hand was warm and soothing. While he could not bring himself to look upon her, it was a comfort. “I shan’t be converted; it is well that I can see myself for what I am and that those around me have no illusions. I shall be the thorn in his side, the unbeliever, until he bears me no more and you shall have me no longer. This is the way of the world.”

 

“You are going nowhere,” Jehan said, his tone surprisingly forceful. The poet rarely spoke when they worked, focusing on the translations and arduous work instead. “You say you are not one of us, but what else could you be? What would you be if not an Ami? You are as tied to all of us as we are tied to another.”

 

Grantaire found that he could not bear to fight them, although he knew they were wrong. He had seen the cold fury in Enjolras’ eyes, seen the way he disdained his wreck of a body, seen the dispassionate contempt for Grantaire’s hard won cynicism.  He knew, no matter how egalitarian the New Levellers claimed to be, if Enjolras hated someone that much, his right of stay was only temporary at best. When Joly declared him free of fever and melancholia, he would be gone.

 

“What has happened?” Joly asked, breathless as though he had run through the courtyard to get to them. “Has his fever returned?”

 

“He believes himself to be hated,” Musichetta told her husband, her voice low and pained. It hurt Grantaire to know he caused her that hurt and on a day for their little family to celebrate. “In particular, he believes that Enjolras despises him and will throw him out of his home.”

 

*

 

Joly prescribed him more bed rest and a flagon of warmed, saffron-scented ass’s milk. Realizing how Grantaire had been pushing himself to make more etchings than he had previously been allowed, his physician forbade him any more work until the Sabbath and threatened it would be longer, should he violate his orders. Jehan was allowed to loan him a copy of Lovelace, so that Grantaire might have mild entertainment, nothing that would excite him or his humors.

 

He lay on his bed in his winter weight nightshirt, reading the poetry by light of a small oil lamp. Perhaps, he thought, Joly should have checked the poems for excitement before allowing the gift.  _ Stone walls do not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage. _ That spoke chillingly to his soul, despite the fact that Grantaire could guess they may have once faced each other on the field.

 

It was small wonder that Jehan would have a Cavalier’s book, Grantaire wondered, but Enjolras seemed to have a rare tender spot for the younger man. He wondered how Enjolras knew the scribe. Jehan had given no indication that he shared in the three’s aristocratic lineage, but a conversation echoed in his head.

 

“I have known you since we were children and having troubles with your letters does not mean you need Grantaire to edit your work. He is your artist, not your tutor.”

 

What kind of common person would an earl know and have such affection for, he wondered, his mind wandering from the poetry in front of him. Jehan was a fair few years younger than Enjolras and for all of his retiring nature and red hair, an attractive man. Grantaire might only have eyes for the man who hated him, but he knew how to appreciate a man’s form, for all that it damned him.

 

He had heard rumors, of course, of gentry and aristocracy taking advantage of pretty maids and innocent serving boys. Enjolras was principled, wild and fiery with the righteous fury of a God betrayed, but perhaps, perhaps when he was young, he strayed. Young men do not always act on righteous principle, after all, especially when their blood and desire run hot. And perhaps, if he cared so much for Jehan and Jehan followed him and kept his secrets, it was not advantage, either. It would explain much and it would make Grantaire ache, to think Enjolras shared such secret desires but not for him.

 

A sharp knock on his door roused him from his painful desire. He glanced out the window, seeing only darkness and night through the expensive pains. Worried that it was Joly or some emergency had been wrought by Javert, Grantaire pulled on his brown breeches for modesty’s sake and opened the door.

 

Enjolras clearly had no thoughts of modesty or propriety for he stood at Grantaire’s door only clad in his nightshirt, his legs and feet bare to the world below its hem. His blonde curls, always a blessed halo, were sleep tousled and wild. His blue eyes, bright as the heavens themselves, bore no signs of sleep, however as he pushed himself into Grantaire’s room.

 

“I had hoped I would catch you after the second sleep tonight,” he said, only stopping when he reached the foot of Grantaire’s bed. “I am sorry that I have been away at the estate so commonly now, but this has become quite political. I did not know of what happened today in the common hall until Joly told me after supper and he made me swear I would not wake you.”

 

“I have not yet had first sleep,” Grantaire admitted, staring at the earl standing in his bedroom in his thin nightshirt. He had imagined something like this mayn times, especially when sleep was elusive and sin was easy. “I often do not get to second sleep at all, before morning and work call. I have merely been amusing myself with the milk Joly is allowing me and a bit of Prouvaire’s poetry.”

 

“Jehan shared his poetry?” Enjolras asked, clearly surprised. “You must be growing close on the Bible project; he so rarely shares something so intimate.”

 

“I meant a book of poetry he leant me,” he clarified, something hurt in his chest thinking of Jehan and Enjolras sharing intimate poetry. “I did not mean to suggest a familiarity I have not earned. When Joly sentenced me to bed rest, Jehan insisted I must have a little mild poetry to entertain myself for the long hours alone.”

 

“He is a very thoughtful man,” Enjolras agreed, his face softening at the mention of Jehan. “I want, no, I need to speak to you of your melancholia, even if Joly has told me not to do so. I thought I saw the light coming from your side of the attic when I woke from my first sleep and I will not be able to get to my second without speaking directly to you.”

 

“Oh.” Grantaire sat heavily on the bed. He had known this day was coming since Courfreyac pulled him into a meeting, but he had always imagined it would be in daylight, when the cynical thorn in his side became too much, that it would be after he rebutted a sermon or was too blatant in his atheism. To have Enjolras in his room, in his sleping clothes, in the latest hours of night or early morning, this was too intimate for Grantaire to bear.

 

“Before supper Jehan pulled me aside and told me somethings that Joly had not,” he continued, one perfect curl of blond hair falling over his eyes. Grantaire imagined that Jehan had, indeed. Enjolras swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing in a way that did things to Grantaire, and he abruptly sat in the spindly chair he kept in his room. “He said some shocking things, something I must… I must know.”

 

He felt as though he could not look at the other man, could not bear his angelic beauty and holy righteousness as he wrote his final destruction. Grantaire could hear the raw emotion in his voice, how it cracked when he spoke as it only did when he spoke of the starving, naked poor. Wrenching his eyes from Enjolras’ face with effort, he buried his face in his hands.

 

“Is it true that you believe me to despise you?” Enjolras’ voice, normally smooth like warm liquid, dropped and cracked. “My brother told me that you think I find you contemptible, that you believe I will have you thrown to the streets for your lack of faith?”

 

“Your brother?” Grantaire asked, daring to look up. Enjolras was flushed red, a sharp contrast with his white linen shirt, and he gripped the seat of the chair with white knuckles.

 

“Jehan is my half brother, of course, by one of my father’s mistresses, but I would never think him less than I,” Enjolras dismissed his fancies with a sentence. “But I have looked after him since he was a boy and he would not lie to me, not about something so important. He said that you told them I despise you!”

 

“Of course you do!” Grantaire exploded at him, anger safer than sorrow in such intimate quarters. “You, our holy and sacred leader, what wouldn’t you find despicable about me? Not only am I an atheist, a cynic, and hateful to all that you believe, I am broken cullion, a reprobate too damaged to even work the fields as other men do, too defective to even make the art I so love on my own. I am here, taking all of the resources as any other man, asking more of Joly than even Courfreyac as he heals, and I give nothing!”

 

“Oh, my Grantaire.” Enjolras dragged both hands across his face, pulling at the shadow of a beard that had grown through the day. “How long have you felt this is so? What have I done to make you think I have such ire for you?”

 

“It has always been so,” Grantaire replied with an easy shrug. He was many things, but he was never a liar. “I saw how you looked at me at that first meeting, when I interrupted your sermonizing with my ravings. I see how you think I need such close supervision, choosing Joly and Jehan to be my minders. You speak and you speak of how my trials in this world have weakened me, both body and soul, physically and morally, and we both know you are right. Whenever I speak in meeting, and yes, I speak with cynicism, you, not Combeferre nor Courfreyac, are the one to push me to my knees and give up my argument.”

 

“Oh, my Grantaire,” Enjolras repeated, his voice low and whispery harsh now. “My Grantaire, you have misunderstood. You have misread me and I should have seen this before. Jehan was right to scold me for assuming you understood me. He reminded me how distant I can be and how the world has hurt you so much. I have sinned in allowing your wound to fester when it was in my power to lance it.”

 

“What have I misunderstood? I am an easy man to despise; you are not the first to do so. Whether my father, my mentor, my commander, I tend to inspire these feelings in men who are born with the power to lead,” Grantaire explained, his own voice small with pain. He must truly love Enjolras, he thought, to bear his heart to him so. “I know my own sins; I know I am too weak and unmanly to be of use. I thought enlisting would harden me up, make a man of myself, but, nae, here I am broken, made lesser even than I was before.”

 

“This is why we must change the world! It does this to men such as you! God’s blood!” Enjolras swore, startling Grantaire. “You are ill, yes, and yes, men have broken your body, but you are more than this. Jehan and Joly are not your minders; they are two men I trust more than anyone in the world to know what to do, should you fall ill again. I remember well when you raved in fever in the midst of my sermon; I would never have forgiven myself if your delirium slayed you. Our whole purpose, our meaning in this world, is to support one another.”

 

“I am not charity,” Grantaire said sharply. He turned away from Enjolras and looked out the window, his own ugly visage reflected back at him from the night. “I am a man and I am not without my senses nor my dignity.”

 

Enjolras hung his head. “You are not charity for us, for me, R. You are beloved. This is what people, good people, do for those they love.”

 

“I am no one’s beloved. I have not wife nor - I have not wife.” Grantaire stared at the other man’s curls hanging down in the room reflected in the window panes. Was he the type who lost his wits between first and second sleep, only to have no memory of it come morning? Grantaire had known a soldier like that. “Some Amis may have affection for me, but they are an affectionate lot by any measure. I feel that, should Courfreyac encounter Lucifer himself playing cards at an inn, he would invite him to a meeting.”

 

“You are not Lucifer.” Enjolras’ hand shot out from where it gripped his seat and held him by his wrist, his fingers splayed over Grantaire’s scars, pulling him around to face him once again. “And there is much love to be had among us. Have you not seen Bossuet, Joly, and Musichetta? Have you not seen how Combeferre dotes upon Courfreyac?”

 

“Combeferre and Courfreyac?” Grantaire repeated, suddenly comprehending Combeferre’s special fear and worry for the other man, the pieces sliding together. The heat of Enjolras’ hand upon his wrist was distracting. “Have I been blind as well as weak?”

 

“Men such as ourselves tend to fall in together,” Enjolras explained, his expression fierce and his blue eyed gaze hot on Grantaire’s skin. “A group of companions, especially among lordlings, is hardly to be remarked upon when a secretive pair might warrant a closer inspection. We three found each other in our youth and Joly joined our ranks at Oxford.”

 

Grantaire could not respond. His mind felt as though it were in the grip of fever again, though this time he knew he was finally seeing them for who they were. He had thought he had fallen in with a puritanical religious sect, not lawless libertines. And then he repeated Enjolras’ speech again and “ourselves” echoed through his head like a prayer. Enjolras, untouchable angel of the Lord, was as Grantaire in nature.

 

Enjolras released him as suddenly as he had grabbed him. “I am overly familiar and I made assumptions. Joly warns me against such things. Idealism can get to my head like strong wine. You are, as Musichetta says, a traditional man, and a soldier. I beg you not to take offense.” After a beat, he asked, his voice as wrought as it had been all night, “May I hope that you can use the same discretion for myself that you have offered to Bossuet and Joly? I have no desire for the law to make an example of me, not for this.”

 

“Not for this?” Grantaire repeated, his mind still reeling. When Courfreyac courted him in the inn, buying him a round and telling him of the great meetings and good works of this religious group, it never occurred to him that he meant “profligates illegally homesteading to steal from the rich and give to the poor” rather than “high minded splinter group devoting their lives to asceticism and protection of the needy.” He had been blinded by his assumptions, thinking them the same strict Calvinists he had encountered so much throughout Britain and the Continent. How was he such a fool?

 

“I would be an example for feeding and clothing the poor,” Enjolras said, hanging his head again, his curls a wild tumbling golden waterfall. “I would take that Javert’s dogs rend me to pieces in serving the needs of God’s children. I would that they take me to the stocks or hang me for educating the children of Britain and Ireland in the Word. But I would not be made an example for being witness to God’s love embodied, if you would permit it so.”

 

“You act the profligates, violating God’s determinations, and yet, you preach of serving God’s children in this cold world,” Grantaire said, uneasy with the religious speech, but in speaking to a preacher of Enjolras’ righteous fire, it seemed necessary. He knew the Word, after all, and the damage it cut through the world like a knife. “You give righteous sermons in the light of day, but come to me in the night, desiring the unspeakable secret. I would not have taken you for a hypocrite.”

 

“There is neither Greek nor Jew, slave nor free, nor is there male nor female, for you are all one in Jesus Christ,” Enjolras quoted fiercely. “I am no hypocrite, those who came before us and sullied the word ‘love’ are the hypocrites. I speak not of lust nor of depravity, but of the desire to be one body with one’s spouse, a holy love that speaks to our great oneness as a Body of Christ.”

 

“And a man shall not lie with a man as he lies with a woman,” Grantaire retorted easily, knowing the words that burned him still, even lacking the sting of belief. “And even if you speak of love, the law speaks of depravity. I know Henry’s statute and it would see you hanged; and that leaves us lucky on this little island! I have seen what they do to the wanton and shameless man in Paris and I have heard the screams of men I have known.”

 

“I care not for the law of Henry and Charles, nor the laws of the Jews, for we were freed of those laws by an angel of the Lord: ‘Do not call anything impure that God has made clean’,” Enjolras replied, now impassioned. “We have all been purified in baptism and I have seen the love of Combeferre and Courfreyac; it is as holy and cleaving as any love between man and wife. With God as the witness to their love and the binding act of wed, what mortal man should stand between them? Should I find a man to cleave as well, would I not? I shall not with a woman, not in this life.”

 

Grantaire stepped back, stunned. He had never made a strong study of the Bible; his life was art and then his life was suffering. A Book written by dead men held no succor. He knew the laws and he knew his punishments; in his cynicism, he had never looked to the same Book that damned him for salvation. He did not believe Enjolras and had experienced too much of Man’s Law not to fear it, but he had no rebuttal.

 

“Please, I beg of you,” his voice was pleading, abased in a way that Enjolras should never be. His curls shook as though he were attempting to hold back stronger emotions. “Be discreet with my secret. It is between myself and God. I do not believe myself damned, but if damned I must be, let that damnation come from God and not the law.”

 

It was unfair, unjust, for Grantaire to hold back when Enjolas was postulant and humiliated before him, an angel brought down to earth and broken. It was Grantaire who belonged at Enjolras’ feet, not the reverse. “I know the law because I fear it; I fear the noose and damnation. In Paris, I feared the fire and…” He swallowed sharply. He thought of Gabin, of his sweet young features and what they may have shared. “I knew a man once, as Adam knew Eve. I did not know, for I was in Milan by then, but he was found out, found with another.”

 

“Oh, R,” Enjolras breathed, tears in his voice, but he allowed the other man to continue.

 

“He was a fellow student when I knew him, a merchant’s son, but as beautiful as any mademoiselle,” Grantaire could hear the agony in his voice, finally sharing the pain with another as he never had and swore he never would. He needed flee the fires of Earth, if not the fires of hell, and that required secrecy. “I remained in Milan, but he did not have the money, the name, or the connections to avoid the court. My peers, who remained in Paris, told me what happened, to him and to his lover. I swore…”

 

Enjolras grabbed his wrist again when Grantaire realized he could not continue. His thumb rubbed gently against the knot of scar tissue below his palm. “I know the fear. I know it because, for many years, it was my companion. It grew when I saw pure love grow between my two closest friends, forbidden and unstoppable. Whinstanley did not - he would not agree with me, but he gave me the signs. He showed me where to look, where to find God’s love for us in this world. When someone is your brother or your sister, you would not turn them to noose - nor the fire - without a fight. We are brothers and sisters here.”

 

Grantaire tried to smile at him in the flickering light of the oil lamp, but was sure it must have been some kind of grimace instead. This was Enjolras the idealist, Enjolras the righteous, Enjolras the angel with the greatest capacity for love Grantaire had ever seen, Enjolras who could not imagine betrayal. “I will not betray your secret anymore than I have betrayed mine. I know not why you thought me unlike myself, but I would take the noose myself before I sent you there.”

 

To Grantaire’s shock, without releasing his wrist, Enjolras left the chair to kneel before him, as a servant might before a lord, and took the liberty to kiss his cracked and scarred knuckles. “You have given me a gift of your history, R, and a greater gift of your loyalty. That you believed me to despise you, to hate you, and you made an offering of yourself, even as Christ offered himself to those who would kill me, makes you one of the greatest men I know. With everyone else, I already had perfect trust when I learned of their love. You feared me, believed the worst, and still were ready to bleed for me. I will repay you in all of the ways I know but will eternally be in your debt.”

 

He rose to his feet, as graceful as a dancer, and looked upon Grantaire with a gentle, mysterious smile. He was positively beatific and Grantaire was agog that this was a gift he could be given: not scorn, but grace. “We have spoken much, but I will be called again to the viscount’s estate for breakfast and to give another accounting for us. Second sleep calls to me and, lest I tell Joly, please try for your first.”

 

Grantaire spent a very long time staring at his door after Enjolras left before he lowered the wick in his oil lamp. It was a much longer time he spent in the inky depths of night before sleep took him. And, for once, his dreams were of rescue by a fiery golden angel who rescued him from an ashen world.

 

*

 

“I hear you have had quite the conversations with my brother,” Jehan said quietly, over a hot pot of raspberry leaf tea. It was the first day Joly had permitted Grantaire to leave the common house and, while he was still not allowed his work, he craved the companionship of the common hall. Jehan had plaited ribbons in his braid, for lack of any flowers that morning, and they hung long at the end, like a Morris dancer’s many colored streamers.

 

“You have a brother?” Lacking any artisan work from Grantaire, Eponine worked at repairing a pair of hose someone had worn through at the heels and toes. Her dark braids were coiled under a white lace cap and she had forgone wearing any apron that day. Grantaire supposed she could work at the women’s house, where the warm kitchens might be nicer in this weather, but he knew better than to question her choices. The Barbadan was her own woman and her ire was not to be taken lightly.

 

“Oh yes,” Jehan replied companionably, his melodic voice carrying over the sound of the pounding rain outside. “Well, a half brother, I suppose, if we are splitting hairs. Enjolras and I share a father. When his mother passed, he insisted on my education and gaining a place in the world, although I doubt either of us thought it would be writing a children’s Bible.”

 

Eponine put her knitting in her lap and thought a moment. She had politely declined the tea and now appeared to regret it. “Different mothers, then? That you make you the bastard son?”

 

“Do not let Enjolras hear you call me that or you will not have the end of it,” Jehan warned with a blush. His auburn hair fairly glowed in the light of the open hearth and when Grantaire looked at him, he could see their shared cheekbones and the curve of their lips. “Besides, we are not speaking of me.” They never spoke of Jehan. “We are speaking of Enjolras and Grantaire.”

 

Eponine smiled wickedly and turned to Grantaire as she picked up her needles again. “What sort of conversations have you been having, R? Are you keeping tales of late night trysts in your garret from me?”

 

Grantaire, whose back and arms ached for the rain, was at once grateful for the unending pain. It meant he did not flush like a schoolgirl at the memory of Enjolras, kneeling before him in on his nightshirt. “A discussion to clear the air and clarify a misunderstanding is hardly a liason, my friend. Where would we be in the world if two grown men cannot speak to one another without a cloud of suspicion?”

 

“I have never heard of my brother having a tryst in his life. I do not believe he is built for anything of the sort,” Jehan said dryly. He took a long sip of the herbal tea. “I only know for he consulted me while you were in confinement, about what might ease your life and work here with us. He is remains quite distraught that you believe him to hate you so.”

 

“I was mistaken about much.” Grantaire did not meet either of their eyes, ashamed of what a blind fool he had been. Instead he focused on the grassy tea, which Jehan insisted would lift his spirits on such a gloomy day. As Enjolras had said, the scales indeed needed to fall from his eyes. Now, as he watched the others at joint meals, or ladling soup to the poor in town, or in the meetings as Combeferre sermonized, he wondered what other secrets lived here that he assumed none could have. “The earl was good enough to clarify everything for me and now I know I have long been in the wrong. Now I believe he may not contain the capacity to hate.”

 

“I would avoid that word as well and you are again mistaken. Enjolras in a rage is a sight to cower before.” Jehan put his earthenware mug on the scarred table. He ran the fingers of his left hand over the knuckles of his right. “He spends little enough time among us these days, as they desperately negotiate, but he wanted me to offer you this.”

 

From somewhere on his person, or perhaps from under the table, Jehan produced a rather large glass jar filled with something amber coloured and translucent. It had been festively covered with a bit of plaid cloth and tied with twine, a little set of dried summer flowers stuck in the twine. Grantaire could not imagine anything that appeared less Enjolras like nor what he would do with a jar of anything. He scarcely kept a book or two in his room by his lamp and was useless in the kitchens; Fantine would always drive him out when he tried to aid her.

 

“It’s prize honey from one of our father’s estates in the vicinity,” the poet explained, tracing a pattern idly on the side of the jar. “One that came into Enjolras’ hands when he was still in school, to provide him with his support, you see. He’s given them primarily over to the people who had once been his family’s serfs and would surely starve without it, but we have a cousin, lesser born than him but not the bastard I am, with a great affection for bees. He and Combeferre were friends in youth and, out of affection for them both, he sends these by the crate. They brought some up to the viscount today as a peace offering, but Enjolras kept one back, for you.”

 

Grantaire stared at the jar of honey, unsure that he had ever seen so much of the sweet gold in one place, even when he had walked among the moneyed in Paris and Milan. “I am unsure of what to say for I have never received such a gift. I suppose I could eat it as a sweet thing, as children eat fruit in hypocras or marzipans whenever they can, but I suspect Joly would object to the humor imbalance that inevitably follows such gluttonous indulgence.”

 

“Joly has already approved the gift and with a bit of glee, for he has no way of procuring such a thing on his own,” Bossuet said, from the entrance of the hall. His viola case was wrapped in an oil skin but Grantaire could not say as much for the rest of the man. From his limp hat, no cock feather in sight, to his drooping breaches, he bore the appearance of a man who had jumped fully clothed into a river and was making a puddle on the stone floor. “According to my wise husband, the sweetness of the honey shall be better than saffron at uplifting your spirits and balancing your humors. He has already written any number of prescriptions for you, to add it to asses milk, to mix with crushed almonds and tumeric, to mix with apple vinegar should your fever return.”

 

“Then I shall accept a tonic from a man who has suffered much with my melancholia,” Grantaire declared, ignoring the sharp look from Eponine. Enjolras was a practical man, or else he never would have been able to successfully separate from Winstanley, and one of his closest friends, Combeferre, had once been an accomplished physician in his own right. No doubt, after their enlightening conversation where he saw how his melancholia affected his sight, particularly where Enjolras was concerned. Perhaps, if he had a bit of sweet and could associate it with the other man, he could see the esteem Enjolras swore he had for him. Like for like was good medicine.

 

“I should think it is for more than melancholia,” Eponine said, leaving her knitting in her lap and taking the familiarity to grasp shy Jehan’s hand where it had been touching the bottle and now lay on the table. She watched him slyly, in front of Bossuet and Jehan, and Grantaire felt like a rabbit being eyed by a wolf. “Honey is a symbol for sweetness and abundance… I know gentry women in the islands where I was raised who were given sweet dark honey to increase their fertility and ease birthing pains.”

 

“I am no maiden in need of fertility,” Grantaire protested weakly, knowing he was blushing despite his pains. He would never be accustomed to Eponine, clever, fierce, and wildly inappropriate in her belief of where she could push Grantaire. “I am sure he merely wishes to help in my melancholia which so affected how I perceived him. He was quite wounded that I believed he hates me so.”

 

“Speaking of your melancholia, Joly is worried the rain will raise miasma from the river,” Bossuet said, pulling his viola case from the safety of its oil skin. “I am to divide my time between yourself and Courfreyac, who is healing well and should be on beggar’s crutches within the week. He does not want the wet miasma turning either of you back from the path to wellness.”

 

He prepared his bow and began a sweet, mournful piece that matched the sound of the autumn rain outside, preparing the fields and forests and lanes of Chatham for winter. Jehan retired to his Bible, consulting three or four tomes as he scratched out words with his ratty goose feather quill. Eponine resumed her knitting, watching Grantaire with her knowing honey-dark eyes and Grantaire, he tried to relax his back and not think about smooth, sweet, golden honey on his lips.

 

*

 

Grantaire heard Enjolras late at night, between sleeps, in the opposite garret often, but he did not see the other man until one of their weekly meetings, where he and Combeferre would sermonize in anticipation of the Sabbath in the morning. The rain had been ceaseless, turning the little courtyard between their buildings into a morass of mud and muck, so Joly had enlisted him into helping Courfreyac, newly on crutches, to the meeting. Grantaire, he explained, was in a unique position to both understand the pain Courfreyac still felt and the pride he had, wounded in needing help to just cross the yard.

 

Unlike poor Bossuet, Grantaire had a fine oilskin and even if it was older, he kept it in good repair. He may have been trained as an artist of the highest calibre and fallen, but he had been in plague cities and southern regions of the Continent beset by disease; he was well versed in the danger miasma and cold rain posed to his delicate constitution. Halfway across the yard, Courfreyac’s left crutch, where Grantaire supported him, got stuck in the mud and the wind blew his hood off, but Grantaire was far more focused on protecting the still weak lord than his own mess of dark curls.

 

By the time they were in the safety and relative shelter of the eaves of the hall, rain water was dripping down Grantaire’s forehead like a gentle waterfall and he knew his hair, a wild riot of coils at the best of times, had surely frizzed around the back of his head like a neglected dark halo. He was all too aware that they were late and Enjolras was already in the middle of a sermon or speech. However, the angel fell silent, watching him help Courfreyac to his seat by Combeferre and Joly pulled over a stool so that he could elevate his patient’s legs.

 

Enjolras stared blatantly at Grantaire and he was discomfited, small and broken under the oilskin that fit him in the army, with his hair wild and dripping rain water over his face and back like an errant boy who had run into the rain against instruction. “You cannot possibly expect to come to the table with the viscount and Javert looking like that!”

 

Grantaire gaped, feeling a bit like a landed fish, not understanding quite what Enjolras said but aware that he, once again, did not meet expectations. To his astonishment, the blond pulled the dark ribbon from his own braid, strode across the common hall, and with all possible familiarity, pulled Grantaire’s own wet curls back with his ribbon. “Besides,” he said, close enough that Grantaire could feel his breath on his cheek, “you will catch your death of cold and we cannot lose you to fever, not now.”

 

Joly fussed over him, suddenly overcome with the fear that Enjolras was right and, in helping Courfreyac across the wet yard, fever would yet again overcome Grantaire. Grantaire know the only fever that was overcoming his body then was the fever of lust and desire. Enjolras, a man he now knew inclined to his own ways of sin and destruction, had wrapped his hair in his own ribbon, in the sight of all of the good people of the hall. What, exactly, that meant Grantaire was unsure; he had always kept away from his own kind. He did know his nerves were as aflame as they had been under malaria and he could not keep his eyes of Enjolras’ slowly unravelling braid.

 

Combeferre was speaking now, although Grantaire could see, now, that he kept on close eye on Courfreyac where he rested next to his crutches. “In six days hence, the viscount will be here with his daughter and Javert, his man and the one who unleashed his dogs on Courfreyac here. The viscount, Fauchelevent by name, has, at least in part, been sympathetic to our cause, particularly when we address the plight of the poor and of children especially. We must impress him with both our righteousness in the path we follow and the ardour by which we follow it.”

 

“Javert will have his sharp eyes out for any weakness among us,” Enjolras joined in, his curls already brushing his shoulders and Grantaire could not help but feel that meant himself. “He has been our strongest nemesis when we have been invited to the table for negotiations and appears not above spilling poison in Viscount Fauchelevent’s ear. He has accused us of being school boys at play and lordlings play-acting as the serfs our grandfathers freed. It is truly up to every person present to prove to Viscount Fauchelevent that his Javert is wrong and what we do is a true religious calling to the people of Britain and the people of the world.”

 

Grantaire’s heart sank even as the ribbon teased the nape of his neck. His was not a religious calling, for he had not faith in God nor in salvation. He remained for some lapsed belief in Enjolras - and by extension, Courfreyac and Combeferre and Joly and the others - and a belief that, while their righteous faith was deeply misguided, that very foolish principle might make a difference, if not for Britain as a broken whole, but for the poor and hungry of Chatham. The Book of Acts meant nothing to Grantaire except for what it meant to his friends, his family, and how it drove them, but it could not motivate him, not the way love for them might. His beliefs, should he have any at all, lay with the people who took action, good action that helped people, and not in dusty pages of vellum, translated a hundred times over.

 

Combeferre and Enjolras continued explaining the negotiations they had been working through, with the occasional addition from Courfreyac, but much of it was just wind in Grantaire’s ears. The three were moderately open about their history and titles; who else would be able to open bargaining for the opening of a viscount’s land but someone who outranked him in the peerage? They were also insistent, to the point of shrillness, that no one use their titles and no one treat them any differently than when they were known only as farmer-preachers as before.

 

Grantaire thought this more than a little foolish, although that was a word he often associated with the les Amis’ little endeavours. How could they forget that they were in the presence of an earl and two lords? It was absurd! The lords, perhaps, Grantaire could offer a passing eye, for Combeferre and Courfreyac were deferring and oft a part of the day to day farming. If they were third or fourth sons, with little prospects of their own and a strong desire to work, he could see them as leaders of a mutually sworn farming town, perhaps in the style of the old Continental communes. 

 

But Enjolras broke that mold so impossibly that Grantaire could not piece it back together for a second cast. An earl, with the charisma and intelligence to cow Javert and keep a viscount, not even from his own shire, at the table while he occupied his land, could never be on the same level as a starving peasant or even Grantaire at his finest, when he sought and received patronage all over southern Europe. He was a man fit to the class and name to which he was born and that meant, no matter how much he truly believed in egalitarianism and communalism, Grantaire knew they would never, not in the eyes of God or man, be truly his match or equal.

 

“Everyone shall wear their Sabbath best,” Enjolras concluded and Grantaire wondered what he had missed. His hair, now completely loosed from his braid shone like sunlight in the gentle glow of the oil lamps throughout the hall. Grantaire could see through the windows that, while he had been daydreaming, night had fully fallen and the rain slowed to a soothing gentle drizzle. “If you wish to represent ourselves or even your own interests or experiences, either with us or with the enclosures and Javert before we arrived, please know that you need no invitation. As always, there shall be food and drink freely for all, even should you desire to bring your family, guests, or friends who are in need of a warm meal and the company of those who care.”

 

“Should you not have a Sabbath best,” Enjolras plucked at the cuff of his burgundy jacket, where there was crimson embroidery in the pattern of doves and olive branches, Fantine’s work if Grantaire had ever seen it, “Come to any of us and we shall clothe you. None shall do without, not now, not when we may have found a way to make your resources permanent, that none of Chatham may worry for food, drink, or clothing for generations to come.”

 

There was a rousing cheer at that, especially from the villagers in the back, most of whom wore the same thin, worn clothing day in and day out for years, until the holes rendered them into rags scarce worth cleaning with. Then, Grantaire knew from too much experience, they might pray to have the money to buy cloth from the store or beg a hand-me-down set of ill fitting clothing from church or charity, praying that next time, in five or ten years, they would have the resources and coin to actually visit a tailor. As much as the powerful - like Enjolras or Pontmercy, his heart whispered - could walk through the fields in fine leather shoes and brightly dyed jackets, the commoners were more often in tattered fabric that scarce covered the modesty of their ailing bodies.

 

“We shall also being having a slaughter of sheep and, if we can rout them from their hiding places in the forest early, pigs in celebration of what we have won yet far and in glory and honor of the God who can lead us and the viscount into redemption for depriving the children of God what is rightfully theirs. If you cannot come to the viscount’s supper or do not wish to be a part of the negotiations, we welcome you and your families to the slaughter and feasting of the animals,” Combeferre said, from where he stood by Courfreyac, his hand on his shoulder. He was as valiant as Enjolras, his voice as clear as a bell and his dark hair pulled back from his noble features. “We are only a few weeks early, but the weather has already turned wet and cold. What we do not need for our own winter stores and for the supper of the fatted calf, it shall be equally distributed among all present.”

 

Grantaire remained quiet, amind the cheering throng, and he could feel both Enjolras and Joly’s eyes on him. He cared not to watch the slaughter of the animals, though it was tradition and he appreciated the sacrifice on cold winter days when only hot meat soup might keep away the chill. He was a cynic and would not be welcome among the faithful, attempting to convert or court Viscount Fauchelevent to their cause. And the only clothing he owned, though better than most of the peasants of Chatham, was his now ink-stained green jacket of worst and two much patched breeches. Even his boots, once a prize possession, were worn and cracked from neglect as he fought his demons and malaria and melancholia. The feast sounded a delight, but he knew he would not be able to attend, not in good conscience. 

 

As everyone filed out of the common hall, filled with joy and the prospect that Viscount Fauchelevent might just allow them the space and land to keep their bellies full and children warm, Grantaire kept his head down and followed Eponine. Courfreyac had Combeferre and Enjolras to help him back to his cozy shared room behind the kitchen; there was no need for Grantaire to help now that the meeting ended. The ribbon, red and bright against his dark hair, shimmered in the lamp light until he pulled the hood of his oil skin over it to protect his dry hair against the rain.

 

*

 

For the first time in what felt like ages, Grantaire managed to fall asleep at a good hour for first sleep. Perhaps the honey and asses’ milk tonic Joly plied him with after supper truly did help with his melancholia or, perhaps, sleep was a good way to avoid thinking of how unnecessary he was to the great Cause. It was wholly unfair and unjust to know that Enjolras had the same depravity, the same bent nature as himself, but was still an angel from God, sent to bring His people into glory, while Grantaire remained in the muck and the mire.

 

He woke from the first sleep with a start, his oil lamp burning low and his copy of Ben Jonson’s *Every Man in His Humour* still half open on his chest. As he normally woke with the rosy (or, as of late, gray) sunrise and the smell of cooking rising from below, he was disoriented and confused. It was his garret, yes, and his bed, yes. Something was amiss.

 

Then the knock came on his door again, that same hesitant yet insistent knock that only Enjolras had ever used. Joly had a firm physician’s knock, like a boxer steadily taking down his opponent, and always called through the door, lest Grantaire suffer in a febrile dreamstate. Grantaire touched the ribbon still at the nape of his neck, almost as a lucky talisman, and pulled on his worn out breeches before padding to the door in his stocking feet.

 

Once again, Enjolras stood in his doorway in only his pale nightshirt, his golden hair in disarray from his first sleep. The stays at his throat were loose and Grantaire swallowed, seeing the outline of his collarbones where his shirt hung open. Enjolras’ eyes were wild and Cupid’s bow lips red, as though he had been biting them, and Grantaire wondered if the other man had had his first sleep at all.

 

“I am sorry to bother you,” Enjolras said, pushing past Grantaire into his room, sounding anything but apologetic. He unceremoniously dropped a package on the bed where Grantaire had just been lying; it was wrapped in the same aged newsprint Grantaire recognized from the pamphlets and packages Feuilly sent over from his shop. “I attempted to attract your attention when you were leaving the meeting, but it appeared you had an imminent appointment with Eponine.”

 

The last part of the statement seemed a little more pointed than usual, even for Enjolras, but Grantaire’s mind was still sleep fogged and full of Latin poetry. He knew Enjolras had a point; Enjolras always had a point, but, for the life of him, Grantaire could not see what it was. He also knew that Enjolras did not need a verbal response from him to lambaste him, so he waited and rubbed the sleep sand from his left eye.

 

“What are your intentions with Eponine?” Enjolras asked sharply, when he realized he would get no verbal response from Grantaire. “I have seen you grow close to her and, the few times I have been in the common hall while you work, I have seen you take familiarities with her.”

 

“More likely, she takes familiarities with me,” Grantaire responded with a humorless laugh, collapsing into his bedside chair. If Enjolras had been watching them so closely, he would know what Eponine enjoyed insinuating, what she knew of his desires. This would be the end of him, surely. “She is a bold woman and, as she is oft want to remind me, no fainting English maid. She has made her way in the world with her own two feet and her own two hands. She has the skills few men of England can profess and no ruin of a man could ask for a better assistant. When I cannot make art or Joly will not let me, she aids Jehan in his work, which is more than any of us could ask of another.”

 

Enjolras’ face softened, the blue settling from tempest to calm seas. “And you let her assist Jehan in his transcriptions?”

 

“Let?” Grantaire barked, mindful that others in the house may still be sleeping their first sleep. He leaned back, allowed the back of the chair to support him. “No man allows Eponine anything. I may as well let the wind blow from the east. And what a question from you, our egalitarian leader! Who am I - a man, a cynic, an artist - to tell one of my sisters what she is allowed to do in her time when I myself cannot work!”

 

Falling into a seated position Grantaire’s bed, folding his limbs loosely and languidly in a way that made Grantaire’s heart stutter, Enjolras asked, “So, then, you have no intentions upon Eponine? I worried when I saw you rush out of the common hall with her.”

 

“What is this talk of Eponine between sleeps?” Grantaire demanded. He had never seen Enjolras so coy. “She is my assistant; you are the one who offered her service to my wounded, incapable hands! Why your suspicions now that I might lead her astray?”

 

Closing his eyes, Enjolras sighed. “Not that you may lead her astray. My brother has a desire to court her and worried that, perhaps, he might be intruding upon another’s path. Jehan is a shy soul, the soul of a poet, and he would rather not dare than offend one he would call a friend.”

 

“Then one or the other of you ought to speak to the woman in question, for I am no one’s keeper,” Grantaire retorted. He paused, thinking over to the last time Enjolras visited him in the dead of night in only his nightshirt. “I thought… I thought the last time we spoke that I…” He could not bring himself to admit again, not if Enjolras had misinterpreted or forgotten.

 

“I had not forgotten,” Enjolras said, answering the question he did not ask. “I bother you not merely for Jehan and Eponine, but for myself as well. If you were to court Eponine, that, too, would be an answer for me.”

 

Not fully understanding the other man’s meaning, Grantaire did not respond. He, instead, took the time to take in the full sight of Enjolras in the light of the dying oil lamp on his window sill. He was still langourous from bed, whether he had sleep or no, and Grantaire longed to rake his fingers through his halo of curls. Less an avenging angel now, Granatire thought him St Stephen waiting for his execution or St John the Beloved at the crucifixion, unable to stop the events unfolding before him. 

 

“You have asked little of us,” Enjolras said, startling Grantaire from his musings. He picked the package from the bed and offered it to him. “Jehan and Combeferre both chided me for not thinking of you and I am shamed. It is not that I don’t think of you; I merely become so focused that I must be reminded to eat and sleep myself lest I fall ill and become useless.”

 

Grantaire accepted the package tenderly. The rough paper was tied with twine and it was a simple action to untie the bow. He was in awe of what lay on his lap; even by the shimmering light of the fading lamp, he could see the richness and skill. On top was a fine green jacket, the shade of deep forest, with embroidery on the sleeves and chest in a lighter green. Tucked inside was a matching waistcoat, this of the fern green embroidered with the darker forest thread. Below the fine jacket, Enjolras had included leather breeches the color of mahogany and a matching spatterdash. Grantaire had not seen such riches since he had received patronage in Milan and, even then, it had been a foolish indulgence with money that could have been put to better use.

 

“I hope I am not too overly familiar,” Enjolras said, his voice soft and melodic. Grantaire is frozen under the gaze of his too-blue eyes the way a rabbit is frozen under the gaze of a fox. “Fantine knew your measurements and I realized, after speaking to Combeferre and Jehan, that we had not given you clothing since Courfreyac brought you among us and I must right such an injustice.”

 

“I am an artist, not a gentleman,” Grantaire protested, lifting the coat into his hands and feeling the weight of the fine wool. The embroidery is obviously Fantine’s work and felt like silk. “I shall cover it in ink or dust or some kind of paint, should I ever regain the ability to paint, and I shall ruin a gift I do not deserve. This is is habiliment for a prince or a lord of your stature and rank, not for a broken man who can no longer even ply his own trade.”

 

“I commissioned it from Fantine and Musichetta when I assumed that you were born to the same peerage as myself and Combeferre and Courfreyac,” Enjolras explained, not even knowing how such statements pained Grantaire, how they showed him Enjolras could not see him for the wretch he was as much as Grantaire had been mistaken himself. “You bear yourself like a man of peerage and rank and it was easy to imagine that you were tied by the same golden chains as myself and, equally, desired to be rid of them. I wanted a gift, an offering to share a secret for a secret. Your history is yours only to give, but I wanted to know.” Enjolras hung his head down, his loose curls tumbling again forward. “For once, I wanted to share mine.”

 

“I am no lordingly, though,” Grantaire said to the top of Enjolras’ head. “Might you give this to the viscount as an offering? Fauchelevent sounded as though he was lending an ear to your cause and I know from Marius that he has spent many trying years in the colonies in the Americas. Perhaps a welcome home gift, a gift to wear to Parliament, would put you firmly in good graces.”

 

Enjolras laughed at that, lifting his head and smiling at Grantaire. “Oh, R, you may be broader and stouter than I am, but you have not met Viscount Fauchelevent! I have never met a man so wide and generously muscled; if there are giants abroad in the world, he is one of them. I have no doubt he could rend me in two if the thought came to his head and pleased him. Those years abroad, although no doubt difficult, have left him as strong as an ox and twice as stubborn. There would be no way a jacket tailored to your shoulders, fine though they may be, would be anything but in pieces should Fauchelevent attempt to wear it.”

 

“Is it a parting gift, then?” Grantaire asked, proud that his voice did not waver. “You wish for me to be well clad on the road, so that I may seek a place in the world without resorting to begging or worse.”

 

“Not this again!” Enjolras flushed angrily, his cheekbones madder red in the lamp light. “Whatever you think I am doing, I have promised you and I promise you again, I am not trying to make you leave les Amis! This is a gift, given from the heart. I would have given it sooner, perhaps for the Michaelmas, but Fantine, when she learned it was for you, insisted that the embroidery be perfect and kept it from my eyes until two days past.”

 

Feeling the butter soft leather of the breeches, it was all Grantaire could do to keep from sighing. “I shall keep them in my chest with cedar and lavender, where I keep the good blankets Musichetta gave me when I was ill and Joly needed to keep me swaddled. There neither moth nor mouse may nibble them and they shall be kept as sweet as baby’s breathe and safe as houses.”

 

“No,” Enjolras frowned. His displeasure twisted his mouth unpleasantly, but Grantaire felt it was directed inwardly this time. “Well, I am not your lord and I shan’t tell you what to do with a freely given gift; I am not so wanton. I had, however, hoped that you might wear them to supper with the viscount after the Sabbath. You are right that accourterment would impress, but not Fauchelevent, who has experienced much hardship and endured more than he says. Nae, Javert and I dare say the viscount’s daughter, Euphrasie, who has influence over him, is among those who would be in awe of a man of your intelligence and bearing in finery.”

 

“I have no desire to impress or court Lady Fauchelevent, however impressed she is with your gift of undue costume,” Grantaire protested, suddenly aware that he ought to avoid putting on airs around those who ranked so high above them. It was not so long ago that such vanity came with a much harder sentence. Rumors had flown since the return of the viscount and a popular tale was that the man’s hardship in the colonies left him longing for the strictness of former times.

 

“I should think not,” Enjolras said dryly, standing. His collar hung completely open now and Grantaire was undone by the sight of his collar bones and the hint of golden hair leading down his chest. “This is my gift to you, not hers to take on her own.”

 

Enjolras strode across the room, as though that made any sense, and carefully closed the door behind him. Grantaire could hear murmurings downstairs of others between their nightly sleeps, but he could not make out individual voices or conversations. All for the best, he thought, for he would not want his cryptic late night conversations with Enjolras overheard by anyone else.

 

He set aside the fine clothing on his chest, somehow unsurprised when a pair of pumps, fit for the court tumbled out. They matched the breeches, made of the same soft leather, and were fashioned with a brass or copper buckle; Grantaire could not tell for the light. Picking them up off the floor, he rested them next to the frippery, putting them aside until true morning.

 

He returned to bed and wrapped himself in two woolen blankets. Raising the wick in his lamp, for he would not be able to rest for some time yet, Grantaire reached for his neglected book of poetry. He could not remember what he had been reading as he drifted off, but no matter.

 

_ What would I have you do? I'll tell you, kinsman; _ __  
_     Learn to be wise, and practise how to thrive; _ __  
_     That would I have you do: and not to spend _ __  
_     Your coin on every bauble that you fancy, _ __  
_     Or every foolish brain that humours you. _ __  
_     I would not have you to invade each place, _ __  
_     Nor thrust yourself on all societies, _ __  
_     Till men's affections, or your own desert, _ _  
_ __     Should worthily invite you to your rank.

 

*

 

Somehow, Grantaire found himself dressed like a little mock lordling, wedged between Musichetta, who was beginning to show, and Joly in their pew in the common hall, now set up for Sabbath services. He usually did everything he could to avoid the lengthy services, even if it meant laying in bed with only beef tea or asses milk for company, but this was important now. The New Levellers, les Amis, were showing their solidarity, proving to the town and to Fauchelevent, to Javert and Lady Fauchelevent, that they were true in their beliefs.

 

Even if Grantaire did not believe in the sanctity of the Book of Acts, of Divine justice and angelic vision, he did understand the importance of unanimity among the ranks. If Enjolras, and by the same token Courfreyac and Combeferre, could show that their sect was of one voice and one purpose, then the supper two days hence would be easier to lead rather than negotiate. The ability to show a unified front before the enemy had been instilled in him in childhood and then cemented in the army. If Enjolras wanted him to appear at the supper, he knew he must show his face at the Sabbath service.

 

Thankfully, most of the services among the New Levellers was a series of sermons from the Three or any visiting preachers from Winstanley’s original sect, who might still have affection for the dissidents. Courfreyac was in a pew near the ambo, his battered leg still in bandages and propped up on a kneeler. Enjolras and Combeferre took turns preaching both from the Book of Acts, as was a weekly occurrence, and dealing with the current readings, which had been shared amongst Eponine, Fantine, and Jehan.

 

“And Jesus saith to Simon, called Peter: Fear not, for henceforth you shall catch men!” Enjolras stood at the ambo, as full of fire as any Calvinist Grantaire had seen on the Continent and as beautiful as any marble statue he had studied in Milan or Rome. His hair, shining in the late autumn sunlight falling through the windows, was braided and tied back in a new red ribbon.  “We shall catch men, not to be their masters, not to exploit them for their labor and uses in this world, not to take from them the resources they need to survive! No, we shall catch men so that they may know Salvation. The Salvation that we shall bring is not that of the old guard and of the aristocracy. They demand labor and exploitation, suffering in this World with vague promises of milk and honey in the Next! 

 

“We know better than this. God Himself calls us to be better than the Romans who beat down the Jewish people and the Pharisees, whose hypocrisy abused their own people for the pagan Romans themselves. We are called to serve men, as we are men ourselves. Is it not said, “ The multitude of believers had one heart and soul,; neither did one say that aught of the things which he possessed, was his own; but all things were common unto them.” It is our righteous duty and God-given mission to share and share alike, for as we catch men we might teach them that all things are common amongst God’s children and none might be above another!”

 

Grantaire felt that he could listen to Enjolras’ polemics until the heavens fell into the earth and God’s judgement cast him into the eternal fire. He did not believe in it, per se. Perhaps there had been a rabbi in Galilee 1500 years ago, or so, who called upon his fellow man to rise up and do good in the world; perhaps such a rabbi was not so different, at least in character and spirit, than Enjolras who called upon his English brothers and sisters to do the same. Perhaps, even, Grantaire thought when hope dared come knocking at his heart, when this rabbi was tortured and executed by their enemies, his followers stayed together and formed a society where the world was a common gift from a godly Father. Perhaps more than a thousand years ago, in the time of ancient Empire when Rome’s soldiers were baptized in the blood of Mithras’ bull, there was a voice that cried out in the desert.

 

But what would a voice in a desert, 3000 miles and 1500 years away, mean to a starving English man or woman today, he could not help but ask. He knew his cynicism was unattractive and politically dangerous, but it was as much a part of him as the keloid scars crisscrossing his back or the dark curls, barely held back by Enjolras’ ribbon. His father had been a selfish merchant, his mother his obedient wife. His tutors, mentors, sergeants, the innkeepers who kept him in wine when he was too feverish to ask for more: they all had this in common: Take everything you can and hoard it; give away none or the masses will come to take it all.

 

No, Grantaire could not heed that ancient voice in the desert, he thought as Enjolras’ voice washed over the assembly.  He could, however, believe in Enjolras, especially when he was at his most charming and charismatic, when he clearly spoke from his very own soul and beliefs. Even if Grantaire doubted he would be able to turn the tides of society toward love and grace and equality for all of mankind, Grantaire believed, even in the most doubting chamber of his own heart, that Enjolras truly believed what he preached. Enjolras, and by extension Combeferre and Courfreyac, truly imagined that they could remake Britain, and possibly the world, into the image of the Beatitudes.

 

He shifted uncomfortably as Enjolras took a seat next to Courfreyac in the pew and Combeferre took to the ambo. Typically, Grantaire knew, this was Courfreyac’s role and one he adored, but Joly refused to allow him the stress of preaching. He had overheard their argument as he left his attic room and smiled to himself when Joly lectured the lord about the dangers of straining his already weak blood and producing more phlegm. It was a selfish pleasure to know that Joly treated all of his patients the same.

 

“We will reconvene in two hours time,” Combeferre announced from the ambo, his voice deeper and more even tempered than Enjolras’ impassioned call to arms - or equality among the children of God, Grantaire corrected himself. “There are those among us who foreswore the Sabbath to prepare food and drink for all those who hunger and thirst among us. On Friday, we slaughtered the herds for winter; today, we shall feast and remember the sacrifices God’s creation offers us everyday. In the courtyard, humble though it is, there shall be tables and food for everyone in this room. Should you need clothing, especially those who will dine with us two nights hence, please seek out Floreal and Babet at the barn to the south; they shall cloth you. Fantine and Jehan shall give you food and drink as to keep body and soul together as we prepare this journey as one heart and one soul before God!”

 

Grantaire remained seated as the people flooded the nave, eager to stand out under the fading autumnal sun and share a Sunday feast with their friends and neighbors. Never one for a crowd or a riot, he had learned, almost as soon as Courfreyac brought him to les Amis, to make sure to stay to the back and along the fringes. Joly and Courfreyac never let him go hungry or without watered down ale; if they saw to his needs, he would make sure he was never too overwhelmed.

 

“That is quite the fine coat you are wearing,” Musichetta teased with a smile, openly admiring the embroidered sleeves. “I don’t know that I have seen you in a coat not stained with ink and time. Have you been hiding something from us, Lord Grantaire?”

 

“Don’t call me that!” Grantaire snapped and then, suddenly guilty, looked around to make sure no one heard his undue ire. The others, however, were too busy focusing on the welcome feast in the courtyard to pay attention to the idlers who remained in their pews. “They’ve all said that to me, all three, at one time or another. They thought me like them, a lord hiding out among the commoners. Enjolras commissioned this when he thought that. But I am nothing like them. I am a shadow, a shade, a ghost, and I have no right to this kind of finery.”

 

“You continue to miss our entire essence of existence,” Bossuet told him dryly, from the other side of Musichetta. He wore a fine jacket of fawn brown wool and darker breeches, a fine figure against Musichetta in her dark rose gown accented with a cream lace collar and matching apron, doing nothing to hide her belly. “I know you were here for all of Enjolras’ preaching and sermonizing at us. Were you listening to the words and message for us or, perhaps, were you paying attention to something else entirely?”

 

“Lesgles!” Joly scolded, reaching around Grantaire and Musichetta to swat at his husband. “Do not strain Grantaire’s black bile and send him back into a fever.”

 

“He is not so delicate as all of that,” Bossuet declared, as though he were the physician. “And even if he be, I grow tired of the games, as though we were all still boys at school.  We are men and honest men, be we earls of such and such a place or bastard poets or fevered artists, we must act according to our rights and our stations. R, if you would give but a small gift to the musician who entertains you and balances your humors, when Enjolras takes to the pulpit this afternoon, please listen to his words and parse the meaning behind them. You are an intelligent, educated man of wit and bearing; I cannot bear you acting the witless fool.” 

 

“It is the Sabbath day and we are at services. We shall not quarrel,” Musichetta told them all, rising imperiously. “Bossuet, you oughtn’t aggravate R’s humors but, truly, Grantaire, listen to my husband and heed his words. We are not here because we are forced or that we shall be punished if we are not in the pews like so many obedient sheep scared of the collie’s teeth and shepherd’s crook. Whatever daydream or rhapsody you fall into usually, abandon it for us when we return and listen to the message. I know you are a cynic, but know that those around you do not merely have faith, but have action.”

 

Grantaire rose to meet her and offered his arm, as had become his affectation when among the three. It allowed Bossuet and Joly a little time together, a gift rarely received in the eye of the public, and it allowed Grantaire the entertainment and novel pleasure of having a beautiful, intelligent woman on his arm. Neither husband seemed threatened by him and, for once, Grantaire did not worry about a friend learning his true nature for he knew theirs. “I can make no promises, sweety lady, for the words of the Gospel and Good Book do fly high above my disbelieving head, but for the sake of the friendship of you all and continued good will shared among us, I will do my best. Perhaps, I shall ask Fantine to water my ale a little more than usual so that I may keep my head and I shall eat lightly, lest I tend toward sleep during the day.”

 

*

 

The common hall was strewn with rushes in a way that was almost but not completely foreign to Grantaire. When he was on the Continent and for a few years upon his return, he had the pleasure of occasionally visiting the halls of men of standing. He never thought the common hall would remind him so strongly of the MacMahon estate, fled as they were from Ireland and seeking a place among the Frankish aristocracy. 

 

Stepping inside for the first time in the day, Grantaire realized the lords had spared no efforts in providing hospitality to the viscount and his small household. In addition to the straw and rushes the group usually laid down when they feasted in the hall, as for a winter holiday or if it should storm on Ascension Sunday, there were soft reeds someone must have gathered from the river banks and it was all overlaid with the herbal scents of lavender, chrysanthemum, and alyssum. He had no idea who knew how to bring the joys of a warm morning in the garden to such a bitter damp night approaching winter, but whichever Ami they were, they were skilled.

 

The twin hearths in the hall were roaring with fires such as Grantaire had never seen in England. With the tables and pews pulled away from the walls and arranged for a traditional manor feast, their size and the beauty of the raw hewn stone was evident and the gneiss reflected the light of the flame well into the hall. Despite arriving earlier than many of the others and the icy rain outside, the hall was warm and pleasant, balmy enough that he was comfortable removing his oil skin.

 

“Grantaire! You are just in time,” Combeferre greeted him. His own coat, wool of the deepest cobalt, was embroidered with the motifs of his family’s house, primarily a crowned heraldic fox, stitched in thread of gold at his cuffs and collar. The waistcoat, barely visible beneath the jacket, appeared to be silk brocade, such as he had once seen a member of the Bourbon family wear. Even Grantaire’s finery, better than any he had worn, paled in comparison to the lord’s.

 

“Lord Combeferre,” Grantaire murmured differentially. “I am your servant.”

 

Combeferre waved him off affably. “None of that, especially tonight, R. This is the night where we show Fauchelevent that our colors do not bleed out in the rainy night and you are no one’s servant. You are far too bloody minded for that.”

 

Grantaire smiled thinly at that; exactly what he wanted when meeting the Peerage for the first time, a lord telling everyone exactly how uncooperative and contrary the crippled man was. Enjolras insisted that he show his face tonight, that he wear the fine green coat and soft leather breeches, and it was only out of his misplaced, shameful devotion to the golden earl. If he had not been so earnest and so beautiful, bewitching Grantaire with his bare limbs under his small clothes, he would have hidden away in his attic room, with an oil lamp and a borrowed book of poetry from Jehan.

 

“Come, come,” Combeferre said, wrapping a friendly arm around his shoulder and herding him toward the end of the hall where the ambo stood abandoned in a dark corner, two carved eagles supporting a pulpit. “Enjolras was fussing all afternoon until Courfreyac convinced him that he needed aid in preparing his suit for the supper. As though the man needed a leg to afix a collar and put on a waistcoat.”

 

Grantaire allowed himself to be led through ankle deep rushes, teetering unbalanced on the gifted pumps, accustomed to his flat leather brogues or work boots. As he shuffled, the earthy scent of chrysanthemum overwhelmed his senses and, for a moment, he was once again in the palazzo gardens, following an astoundingly proper courtier to find another young woman in need of a portrait. The chrysthanthemums, bursting in their autumnal majesty of  golden bronze and deep violet, were the glory of the garden that year.

 

“I know that we always use the pews, as a symbol of our equality and, of course, because we can fit more people at each table that way,” Combeferre said, clearly unaware of Grantaire’s rhapsody, as they stopped at the head table, sitting crossways over the area they used as an altar during services. “But even though Fauchelevent seems a bit changed from his time in the colonies, Javert is a stickler for propriety, especially when Lady Euphrasie is present, so Enjolras has insisted upon using chairs for the head table. God’s wounds, if I knew where he dragged them out of…”

 

Pulled out of his own mind by the doctor’s curse, Grantaire stared at the table and realized that Combeferre, too, felt they were walking the knife’s edge by inviting the viscount’s household to join them in breaking bread. The table at the altar was truly fit for an earl, draped in Irish linen and set with chrysanthemum flowers and candles floating in bowls, with true silverware and folding fans beside bone-white china at each place. True to Combeferre’s anxiety, rather than a solid bench pew on either side of the table, the far side, so that the diners might look out over the hall, was lined with solid chairs, carved from English oak and with velvet cushions on each seat.

 

“God above help us all,” Grantaire murmured, out of habit rather than prayer. Already self conscious in regalia he had not earned by birth or worthy deed, when he stared at the head table, he knew that, if he had a rightful place in the hall tonight, it was as a servingman. It was a vast horseshoe shaped table, draped in heavy linens and set with mountains of flowers and exotic fans of brightly colored feathers. “I did not imagine anything so sumptuous as this. I have walked among the gardens and halls of the palazzos of Italian counts and the chateaus of the French countryside, even once dared enter an Egyptian palace, but never have I been invited to such a fete, as either guest or entertainer. This is far beyond anything that I can bear.”

 

“You will bear it, R,” Combeferre told him, resting his arm over his shoulder again, the thread of gold embroidery scratching at Grantaire’s ear as he did so. With his free hand, the doctor turned ecclesiastic pointed to one of the chairs, a hulking monument to the importance of the man who would occupy it, the posts elaborately carved in fanciful designed. Both the back and seat were cushioned in lush viridian velvet. “Enjolras has already declared that to be your seat for the evening. You shall be by his side and, should you need support, even just to know that we need you here and you have every right to look the viscount in the eye, because you are both merely men and blessed children of God, simply look to me.”

 

“And where shall Viscount Fauchelevent be seated? And the Lady Euphrasie?” Grantaire asked weakly. He deeply regretted his vulnerability to a half naked Enjolras, out of his coats and breeches. “What of Javert?”

 

Combeferre pointed out each seat in order: a mammoth throne of oak viscount Enjolras called a giant, and beside it, matching oak chairs of a smaller size for Javert and Lady Euphrasie. Marius was given a seat of honor on the far side of Javert. Mirroring Enjolras’ seat, set with his coat of arms, were the seats for Grantaire, Eponine, Combeferre, and Courfreyac. Combeferre’s seat matched Grantaire, solid and declaring their import. Courfreyac’s chair was of curious design, but, after squinting at it in confusion, Grantaire realized it was arranged so that the lord might recline if his leg pained him at all during the long supper.

 

“Where did he find these things?” Grantaire asked, his low voice frantic with fear and emotion. “I cannot do this. I will sit with Joly and Bossuet or Bahorel and Feuilly. I am not worthy of this sort of tableau and, ah, you cannot match me with Lady Euphrasie. I have no idea how to talk to women, much less the high born daughter of a viscount.”

 

“Feuilly is working late tonight, making more pamphlets, in case this supper is the sort of disaster I keep imagining it might be.” Combeferre’s arm remained across his shoulders, now less a comforting friend and more a prison guard. “I have known Enjolras since before we were in pants. If he imagined that something like this was on the horizon, he would not tell any of us, but he would not spare the effort to outshine Fauchelevent’s admittedly opulent hospitality. The carving looks to be Marius’ work and Christ knows that boy would do anything for Enjolras’ approval.”

 

“You curse a fair bit for a minister,” Grantaire told him, desperate for anything but the knowledge that, within the hour, he would be expected to entertain Lady Euphrasie Fauchelevent while Earl Enjolras negotiated with her father and Lord Combeferre held off the worst of Javert. He carefully did not mention Courfreyac; over the past several weeks, he had noted how fiercely protective Combeferre had become and did not want to poke the sleeping bear. Eponine might support him but he feared her wolfish familiarity might offend the viscount or his daughter.

 

“I am not ordained in any denomination and I wear no dog collar,” Combeferre replied. “If any situation well deserves the cursing of a drunken sailor, it is this one. I do not want Courfreyac facing Javert, but if I am not here, he will do it alone. I do not want Enjolras to engage in debate with Fauchelevent, but I am powerless to stop them. I mean no offense, but I also believe Enjolras to be a little mad, thinking you might entertain Lady Euphrasie when Joly has been restricting your work, even during the day. I adore Eponine as a sister and she is any man’s equal, but I fear she might offend such a traditional household and, God’s bones, I fear they may learn of her past.”

 

“I would be insulted, but I do not believe I would be the best man for the task, even if my physician were not so concerned,” Grantaire told him, softly. He absentmindedly rubbed at the scars on his wrist. “I do not know what mania has gripped Enjolras, but he cannot play me as a lordling amongst you. Surely, I shall stand out as a setting a river rock on a ring of diamonds and rubies would strike the eye of even the most common man. Even if I fool the viscount and his daughter, Javert is vicious and like a hound with a bone. He will learn of my deception and I shall pay the price.”

 

“There will be no price and you are no common river stone,” Enjolras said easily from behind them, the rushes and reeds camouflaging the sound of his pumps on the floor. When Grantaire turned to see him, his heart leapt to his throat and he could make no sound.

 

If Combeferre was resplendent in cobalt wool, Enjolras was dazzling, striking awe into any who might look upon the face of God and speak. His jacket was of quilted crimson silk, plain in its beauty, and the starched lace collar arresting in its restraint. His waistcoat and breeches were of matching black brocade; the only offer to the vanity of the times was the edge of a phoenix on his waistcoat, scarcely visible when he stood. His hair was pulled back at the nape of his neck with a strip of the same brocade and he wore a dog collar, covering his Adam’s apple, instead of his usual white neckerchief. Somehow, he had struck the perfect line between the vehement Calvinist preacher, preparing to bring his flock back from the brink of hellfire, and the indolent young earl, reveling in his wealth and stature.

 

“Tonight shall be a wonder and, if all goes well, we shall have an established place to do God’s good works on earth,” Enjolras beamed at them, clearly full of hope that was not shared by the other men. In the variable light cast from the roaring hearths, Grantaire thought he could be the very phoenix himself. “I loaned Courfreyac one of my better collars. Joly and Bahorel are accompanying him and he should be along shortly. Bossuet is rounding everyone else up; I want us all to be seated and ready when the Fauchelevent household arrives.”

 

“Already planning the upper hand?” Combeferre asked. Grantaire did not look, but he could hear the single raised eyebrow. Combeferre’s arm, heavy with thread of gold and determination, lay considerable hold on him, holding him in place as though he had any place to run.

 

“I may not approve of my father’s methods, but there is a great deal to gain by leveraging status and propriety at a public bargaining table,” Enjolras told him, the glow of his joy levelling to a familiar steely determination. “I am no hardened monarchist, bleeding England dry, but I know better than to assume Javert and Fauchelevent have such scruples. We shall be seated at the head table and everyone shall have a tankard of ale and a plate of hearty white bread and aged cheese before Marius brings their party into the common hall.”

 

“Did I hear a tankard of ale?” Courfreyac called from the other end of the hall, where Joly was carefully removing his oil skin to hang by the fire. Grantaire was thankful, again, for the indulgence of the rushes and dried flowers; no matter how wet Courfreyac’s shoes and crutches, he would not risk falling as he crossed the hall. “I am damp and cold down the bone. A tankard of mulled ale, heated from the fire and spices from the desert of the Holy Land would banish the miasma rising from the cold river.”

 

Combeferre abandoned Grantaire to Enjolras and took one of Courfreyac’s arms, so he would not be relying solely on the crutches as Joly stood back, drying himself before one of the hearths. Their progress was slow, as they passed empty table and empty pew, but Grantaire appreciated now the tenderness that passed through the men, how clear it was to him straight away that Combeferre would give his whole heart if it would help Courfreyac and how plainly Courfreyac knew it.

 

“No humble mulled ale tonight,” Enjolras told him, his voice as soft and friendly as it ever was, a tone reserved only for his oldest of friends. Grantaire wished the other man’s blue eyes would soften to that impossible blue of the summer sky when he turned to look at him, rather than the blazing hot fury of a farrier’s forge. “We shall begin with a bit of watered ale, as is appropriate for a humble beginning of bread and cheese, shared among all. With dinner we shall have French wine and then, after, I have procured us all a share of sack and marzipan with pomegranates and oranges.”

 

Grantaire was happy Courfreyac was already seated in his reclining chair when Enjolras spoke for the man dropped his crutch with a resounding thud. “I have not had sack since, well, actually I remember toasting with sack when we completed law, but after that, my memory is all dreary rain, wet fields, and reading Scripture.”

 

Combeferre affectionately cuffed his shoulder. “Shame on you, Cour. And you cannot speak as such tonight. Enjolras used our resources to outshine Fauchelevent’s hospitality and we must make sure we maintain our pride and point of place. We may be a religious sect, we may call for the defiance of social norms, but we can still offer what is expected by a viscount and his household.”

 

“Of course, we are here to shout the cause of equality in the eyes of the Lord amongst all of Britain, tearing down the enclosures, feeding the hungry, and educating the youth,” Courfreyac replied, the tension in his voice belying his anxiety. He turned to Enjolras, “I know this is your plan and your plans have always worked, but are you sure? Javert scared me before he set his dog on me. I haven’t met the viscount or his daughter, but they would not have hired that man if they are not a certain kind of crafty themselves.”

 

“Whether they are as shrewd as Javert or naive as Baron Pontmercy, I do not believe you have a choice right now, my lords,” Grantaire said, when he saw the hope flicker in Enjolras’ eyes, like a lamp in a strong wind. This venture was dangerous, potentially one of the more wild undertakings Grantaire had been drawn into in his life, but they were already here, standing ankle deep in rushes and chrysanthemum and the time for choices was long past. If Grantaire was standing in front of a high table fit for a prince, he would not allow an actual lord, raised to and accustomed to such things, remove himself as the keystone, forcing the whole structure to collapse. 

 

“What are you doing standing around?” Fantine had come up behind them, silent as a mouse in the reeds, but clearly prepared to take charge when the lords were debating the odds of their plan working. She was sublime in a dusk blue dress, only enhanced by a small starched lace collar and lace edged apron that almost met the floor. “Enjolras, Combeferre, you ass, what was the point of writing out an orchestrated plan for this meal if you will not follow it? At least Lord de Courfreyac is already in his place and I doubt you’ve told Grantaire his role at all.”

 

“I might guess, madam,” Grantaire told her, walking behind Courfreyac with no small amount of trepidation and taking his seat. “I am no lord, nor am I leading gentry, but I know the etiquette of a set table and Lord Combeferre showed me the table before Lord Enjolras arrived. I believe it shall go thus: Lord Enjolras shall engage directly with Viscount Fauchelevent while Eponine and I entertain young Lady Euphrasie. Lords Combeferre and de Courfreyac will preoccupy the dog Javert, ensuring that, should they lose his attention, he is more concerned at the popinjay commoner and Barbadan slave girl distracting the attentions of an eligible lady of the house and thus does not interfere with Lord Enjolras’ scheming. Marius might act as a third buffer for Javert, if needs must arrive.”

 

The hall was silent but for the crackling of the fires as Grantaire finished and took his seat. At last, Fantine spoke. “Enjolras was right. If you were not born a lord, you have the intelligence and bearing to carry off the game. You lot, look to R. If he distracts the lady and you distract the dog, this may work.”

 

While they spoke, the other members of their sect and villagers from Chatham and a few riverside hamlets further out from the main estate began to filter into the hall. Those sure of their place - Musichetta, Jehan, Bahorel - hung their oil skins by the hearths while those hesitant or still shy among the robust sect kept their damp outer garments close by. As instructed, everyone was in their Sunday bests, shades of spring and autumn touched with frost; it was so different than the varying shades of black and brown Grantaire knew was best outside of this rare piece of paradise.

 

Under Fantine’s fierce visage, Enjolras and Combeferre took their appropriate places at the head table. Grantaire was deeply uncomfortable, sat at Enjolras’ elbow, and distracted himself by watched his friends and comrades fill the hall, eager for the unusual feast and apprehensive at hosting aristocracy in the same hall where they worked, studied the Bible, and debated law and politics. Grantaire was not alone in his fearfulness of what changes this night boded.

 

It felt that it was only minutes after that everyone was seated, enjoying white bread and ale, finally relaxing as they realized this was so similar to the holy day feasts Courfreyac orchestrated for the village and rural poor. At the head table, Eponine jibed at Grantaire’s gifted finery, though she was resplendent in a dove gray wool gown with a starched lace collar and creamy shawl. Grantaire was so distracted by her wordplay that he realized the viscount’s entourage arrive only when her eyes widened and she stopped speaking mid-sentence. Her dark face took on an unhealthy ashen tone and he turned to see what gave the hardy woman such ill humours.

 

He knew Javert by sight, as did any in the region of Chatham, and Marius, the hothouse flower of a baron, led him into the hall. A hush fell over the New Levellers and their supporters as Javert strode among them, imperious in an iron grey doublet and starched collar. His eyes and face were harsh as ever and he led two people, presumably Viscount Fauchelevent and the Lady Euphrasie. 

 

Enjolras had not exaggerated when he described the viscount; Fauchelevent was a hulking giant of a man, strapping and at least six feet in height, larger even than Bahorel. His face was haggard and scarred; he appeared a man more likely to man a wharf or plow a field than stand as a peer despite his be-ribboned short coat and braid. His daughter was a sprite, a fairy next to him, slim and as dark as Eponine and decked in an airy blue gown with a lacy white shawl. Her dark hair was plaited into many braids that were pinned to the crown of her head and set with shining, lustrous pearls.The two figures could not have been more dissimilar, though they could not be anything other than father and daughter.

 

It also appeared that Combeferre and Enjolras were correct in assuming that Lady Euphrasie was the correct way to win the Fauchelevent household to their side. Even as Javert stalked through the hall, scowling at the cowed peasantry, the viscount patiently waited as his daughter greeted many of the goodwives and young women as though they were her own dear friends, despite having arrived only so shortly from Mersey-side and not having ever lived among them. Eventually her father guided her to the head table and when she locked eyes with Eponine, she fell back against the viscount in visible distress.

 

Javert straightened, narrowing his eyes at his charge’s reaction, but before he could do more, the viscount spoke. His voice was deep, as though stones themselves were speaking. Wrapping a muscled arm around Euphrasie’s delicate shoulders, he asked, “Do you know a member of this sect, my dearest?”

 

With more strength of character than Grantaire had ever had in his whole life, Eponine rose from her carved chair and stepped in front of the pair, falling into a deep curtsy, her skirt turning into a wide pool of gray wool. “My Lord Fauchelevent, I knew your daughter in a time of difficulty in our childhood. I did not know that Cosette was your daughter; I have seen no face from my childhood but Baron Pontmercy since arriving in England.”

 

Lady Euphrasie looked fearfully at Eponine and then to Marius. Stepping away from her father’s protection, she touched Eponine’s shoulder. “Am I to understand, then, that your parents are not among your sect?”

 

“They sold Eponine to my grandfather more than a decade past, my lady,” Marius told her anxiously. “I do not know if they remain in Barbados, but they are not in Chatham or the local villages.”

 

Fauchelevent looked at Marius sharply. “You trade in the flesh of women?”

 

“No one here practices such devilry,” Enjolras told him, quickly. Grantaire could read in the tightness of his voice that the earl was worried his banquet was already derailed. “We are all equals in this hall and none may have ownership or power over another. Sister Eponine is currently engaged in the work of illustrating a children’s Bible with Brother Grantaire here. Lord Combeferre and I were of the thought, Lady Euphrasie, that you might be interested in their project. We were unaware of any unpleasant shared history and did not intend any offense.”

 

Lady Euphrasie smiled at Enjolras and it made her positively angelic. “I have no harsh words for Eponine, my lord. We were children in a terrible time, but children do not run a household.” She turned to Eponine as she rose from her curtsy. “If you would have me, I am quite interested in such a thing. I remember you had a deft hand when we were young.”

 

“You may not have such a barbaric profession, Lord Enjolras,” Fauchelevent continued in his gravelly voice, his eyes not leaving Marius. “Javert has informed me quite well of your use of my estate as your personal farmland, but I will not be seated at the same table as a slaver. My daughter and I had some unhappy times in the colonies and I have seen the wreck of human misery such ogres leave in their wake.”

 

“My lord, I believe I remember you, from when you took Cosette from my parents’ inn in Bridgetown. You were such a big man and my father so small,” Eponine said in her quick, lilting accent before Enjolras could respond. “I am proud to be a freewoman now in England and it is Sir Gillenormand who bought me from my father, not the baron. Please, sit, if you will; we have done much to welcome you in our home.”

 

To the relief of the Amis at the table, the viscount acquiesced. “Ma’am, it was a long time ago, but you know your history better than I would.” Sitting, he turned again to Marius, who was wan under the scrutiny. “Even if you did not trade in flesh yourself, you have much to redeem yourself for your family’s barbary. Am I to assume your association with these peoples religious for your soul in these dark times?”

 

Enjolras took the opening for what it was and immediately engaged the viscount with as much charismatic rhetoric Grantaire had ever seen. He was momentarily distracted by his candid fervor, the beauty of the blond speaking of the importance and sanctity of their movement. Eponine touched his wrist familiarly, drawing him into conversation with the Lady Euphrasie, whom Eponine called Cosette. 

 

Lady Euphrasie proved to be an intelligent and prepossessing conversationalist. Grantaire allowed Eponine to take the lead about their etching work as they regularly wandered into reminiscing about their childhood in the Caribbean, of which he knew nothing. He attempted to keep half an ear to Enjolras and Fauchelevent but it proved too distracting and he doubled down on engaging with Lady Euphrasie.

 

“Oh, but how would an artist such as yourself end up on Papa’s Chatham estates?” Lady Euphrasie asked, as Floreal and her companions served delicate pike and eel pies, shaped in the image of beech leaves. “I imagine there is little work for someone as skilled as yourself in Papa’s country estate.”

 

Grantaire stared at her for a moment, the hand holding his twined fork frozen over his pie. Lady Euphrasie was beautiful, in an elfin and innocent fashion that deeply contrasted with Eponine, but he knew a probing question and could recognize the intelligence in her gaze. His life was not suited to any dinner table, much less dinner table prattle meant to amuse and entertain a lady of her caliber.

 

“He is quite shy about himself,” Eponine told her, patting his arm familiarly. “I have been his assistant all of this time and I do not quite know the answer myself. He is, however, under the care of Dr Joly.” She took a moment to point out Joly, Bossuet, and Musichetta where they sat near the fire. “I have not been here long, as I came to England with Baron Pontmercy, but I have been told Lord de Courfeyrac found him wild with fever and, as he has been recovering, he has shown no desire to return to the Continent.”

 

Lady Euphrasie nodded, contented with the answer. “That is such a wise decision, Master Grantaire. I have never been to the Continent, but I was raised abroad and have seen much of the wild ways of the world. It is a wise man who, having tasted those dangers, chooses to return home and attend the chastity of your soul. Oh, and to put your skills to a children’s Bible!”

 

“It was the idea of Enjolras and Combeferre, not mine,” Grantaire demurred after swallowing his food. He was uncomfortable with the image of himself as a wholesome, chaste Bible illustrator. “And perhaps Dr Joly or Master Prouvaire. Last summer, I attempted a portrait of Mistress Joly and I thought the arts were lost only to my memory. It is they, and Miss Eponine here, who allow to give back to the world again.”

“You are a humble man,” Lady Euphrasie told him, her dark lips curving in a smile that lit up her honey-wine eyes. “I can see that the work you do is good for the soul. When Earl Enjolras told Papa that the Amis had an artist with Continental training amongst you, Master Javert told him that you would be a degenerate and a danger to the moral character of his people. I am ever so pleased that he could not be more wrong. It is a childish thing, but I do love to prove Master Javert wrong when he assumes the worst in people.”

 

“You would find that a pretty diversion,” Eponine remarked, but her equally pleased smile took any sting from the comment. She paused as whole capons were brought out. “If you find Master Grantaire’s character worthy, I am sure you would be interested seeing the worth of Master Prouvaire, our writer, as well as my own. Perhaps you might convince your papa of allowing you to come down to the common hall one day while we work, excepting the Sabbath, of course. I am sure Mistress Joly would be pleased to be a chaperone.”

 

“Why would I need to visit to see the worth of your character?” Lady Euphrasie frowned and looked over to where the viscount was engaged with conversation with Enjolras over their own capon. Then she reached over and grasped Eponine’s larger hand in her own. “Do not imagine I hold our childhood against you and you have so very clearly risen above the pain and petty vanity for which your parents live. I was given the gift of my father saving me from that Hell. It appears your father stooped lower and you endured more than I and yet, here you put yourself to work helping those who struggle themselves. I cannot imagine anything that could possibly speak more highly to your character than knowing intimately what we endured as children, hearing of your plight and suffering under Sir Gillenormand, and then learning of your project with Master Grantaire.”

 

Eponine flushed prettily at the praise, clearly expecting a reprimand rather than commendation. She lifted their clasped hands and lay them on the table. “Then you will come to visit us at work? I am sure Master Grantaire can convince Mistress Joly to chaperone you; he and her husband are the closest of companions.”

 

“If you be there, I do not know that I would need another chaperone.” Lady Euphrasie released their hands to carve her capon. “If you are serious about the invitation, then I shall make it my own work to join you as often as I might. There is precious little to do in my father’s house and I am unused to idleness. Lord Combeferre has offered me a tour of your works and told Papa that there are many righteous women who might chaperone me, but Master Javert swore to him that despite outward appearances, your sect is full of loose morals and unorthodox tendencies.”

 

Unable to stop himself, Grantaire looked to where Joly sat laughing with his wife and husband by the fire and then to Lords de Courfreyac and Combeferre, where they struggled to have polite conversation with a cold Javert. His heart tightened in his chest, knowing that Javert had found them out after all. He wondered if Javert had orchestrated tonight, had perhaps put the seed of an idea in their heads to host such a banquet only to allow him to reveal their licentious and libertine nature.

 

“We are a religious sect doing the work of the Apostles, creating a better world, striving to bring Christ’s work and Word to those who need it most,” Eponine said easily, casting a side eye toward Grantaire, but he could hear the tension in her tone. “We have been telling you of our labor making etchings for the Bible, but every day, everyone in this hall does apostolic work. Mistress Fantine makes sure none may go hungry while Mistress Floreal and Master Babet make clothing so even the poorest of the poor be warm and clothed. Doctor Joly and Lord Doctor Combeferre freely offer their vast medical knowledge to the people of your father’s lands.”

 

Lady Euphrasie’s laughter was like the gentle tinkling of cut glass in the wind. “Oh, you mistake me, my sister! Master Javert imagines criminals lurking in the garden to steal our tapestries and that any man who does business with Papa to be a degenerate and a thief. For Master Javert to accuse you of debauchery and corruption merely means that he is aware of your existence. I promise you that Papa has given his allegation against your sect no more weight that his supposition that Papa’s vintner has adulterated his wine with arsenic.”

 

“And why would his vintner do such a thing?” Eponine asked, as Babet silently pulled their plates from the table. “I am no noblewoman, but I have served Baron Pontmercy and his grandfather and have seen what the aristocracy of the Caribbean consider luxury. If Sir Gillenormand found adulterated wine in his cellars, he would have the man responsible publicly whipped and branded.”

 

“Yes, that does sound like our childhood,” Lady Euphrasie remarked, unphased by the brutality of the statement. Grantaire watched as she touched a scar on her forearm, perhaps remembering something of their shared childhood. “Papa does not approve of such things and Javert is merely seeing dangers in the shadows; it is his way. Papa’s vinter is as innocent as you are.”

 

“If you tell us when you might visit, I will be sure to have some of the etchings out and perhaps some prints for you to take with you,” Grantaire said, accepting a sugar sculpture of a peacock under the Tree of Life. Lady Euphrasie was more open minded and so willing to think the best of them that he knew he needed to keep her welcome among them. “I do not know if any particular parable or passage holds any special meaning to you, but we would be happy to offer you devotional imagery to keep as a momento.”

 

“Oh, these are almost too pretty to eat!” Lady Euphrasie exclaimed when Floreal placed her sugar sculpture in front of her. “I had no idea you had such wondrous resources and experienced cooks at hand. I am still unused to these indulgences; when we were in the colonies, it was a lucky thing to have a full larder at the end of winter, much less these fancies.”

 

“You are an English lady now,” Eponine told her, slicing into her peacock with a delicate silver spoon. She was the epitome of fierce elegance, contrasting with the shy shadow who had once followed Marius with Courfeyrac. “Whatever humble beginnings we might share, this is your lot in life. You must enjoy the indulgences and fancies that lay before you. You are Lady Euphrasie Fauchelvent, no longer little Cosette fetching water for the guests.”

 

Tapping the sugar sculpture with the head of her spoon, Lady Euphrasie frowned at Eponine’s word, wrinkling her forehead in thought. “No, I will always be Cosette. I may be a lady and Papa a viscount, but that does not change who we are or, rather it should not. If that is the way of things in England, perhaps there is such a need for your works as the earl tells Papa when he visits.”

  
  


*

 

Grantaire was almost expecting the hesitant knock upon his garrett door as he sat up in bed reading a small folio of Grymestone’s poetry and essays. In the hopes of speaking privately with his forbidden object of desire, he had kept his lamp wick higher than was strictly necessary so that he would be able to see the light under the door. It was wasteful, especially given all of the resources that had been funneled into the evening’s feast, but Grantaire could not bring himself to lower the wick.

 

Despite the knock, Enjolras did not wait for Grantaire’s response and stepped into his room, closing the door quietly behind him. He was again in his nightshirt with the stays at his neck loose, tempting Grantaire’s already active imagination, and sat on the small bedside chair, motioning Grantaire to remain where he was. In the flickering light of the oil lamp, Enjolras looked exhausted, with unusually dark bruises under his eyes that Grantaire hadn’t seen during the banquet.

 

“I am fearful that we will wake to the law in the yard,” Enjolras confessed without preamble. He clasped his pale hands in his lap bunching his nightshirt over his thigh. “I thought all was lost before it even began and Fauchelevent is a hard man. I had no idea the experiences he and his daughter had in the New World and Javert is more eloquent than I.”

 

Grantaire, unsure why the golden man was divulging such person weakness to him rather than Combeferre and de Courfreyac, did not know how to respond. Enjolras was always an avenging Michael, an Old Testament prophet driven by a wrathful god. Even tonight, at the table while he watched Eponine and Lady Euphrasie engage over dinner, Enjolras had been immersed in conversation with Viscount Fauchelevant with the energy and verve he always showed before the Amis. A weary and skittish Enjolras in a thin nightshirt was a new figure for him.

 

“I have prayed and I have begged in the privacy of my rooms,” he continued, his gaze slipping over Grantaire and to the darkness outside his window. “But there are no clear answers. I know my father would never have even entered our hall tonight and would have had us routed as soon as his man informed him about our activities. Yet, I have spoken with Combeferre, after he settled Courfreyac, and Javert is relentless in shutting us down. We have moved before, but I hoped to sway another of the aristocracy to see the light. I fear I may have been selfish, in my desire to see another of my rank accept us, rather than immediately move us, for the safety of the movement.”

 

“I do not know how I deserve to be your counsel,” Grantaire began. He set his folio on the table with the lamp. “I am a degenerate artist who is more familiar with drinking houses and cards than I am with shepherding the elect, but I can say Lady Euphrasie is no more a fainting English rose than Eponine or Musichetta. I have met women of her like on the Continent; she is fierce and willful and has experienced much hardship in life. She showed great interest in your work, given Eponine’s history with her. If she has the sway of her father you have said, and if she were honest in her interest in our enterprise, I suspect we will, in the least, come to a compromise of sorts.”

 

“I speak to you because you are more worldly than any other in our sect,” Enjolras told him seriously, meeting his eyes. Enjolras’ face was weary and aged in the lamp light, suddenly and painfully human and needy. “I was scarce more than a youth when I joined up with Winstanley and have oft worried our naivete, as well as our backgrounds, might lead us astray. Aye, you profess atheism but you, too, have a soul and are a child of God. I have not pressed upon you before as your health and melancholia took precedence, but you performed so well tonight I might imagine Lady Euphrasie wishes you are of her stature.”

 

Choosing to ignore the last statement, Grantaire sought to assay Enjolras’s worries. “Fauchelevent must be a widower for he has no wife and Cosette made no mention of a mother; after they left, Eponine spoke of a beautiful woman leaving her in her family’s care, a missing mother. Thus, Cosette likely has hold of her father’s heart, for he is a kind man and rescued her from a disastrous fate, according to her conversation. You also gave him a chance to see the people of his lands and, undoubtedly, spoke to him of their needs and how they suffer. A good man would not drive out those who provide in his stead.”

 

“If he is a good man,” Enjolras countered, biting his lower lip, a white tooth near drawing blood from the pink flesh.

 

Grantaire had to hold himself in check. The other man surely did not know what he did to him. “Many an ill character can charade, but his rage at Eponine’s former situation was unexpected and thus, must be true. Certainly, if he is the many who raised Lady Euphrasie, she is a testament to his fine character. Go, sleep, and dream of a world where all men are equal. In the morning, refreshed, you can complete your work.”

 

Enjolras did not speak for a long moment and appeared to be pondering something. “If I return to my little room, I will not be able to prevent myself from returning to my desk and writing til dawn brings me to the kitchens until Fantine throws me out again. If it is not too familiar, I might request to sleep here tonight?”

 

Thrown, Grantaire paused. He had shared his bed many times and knew the luxury he had of being able to call this mattress his alone. When he had traveled, it was not uncommon for an inn to sleep three or four men to a bed, but none of those merchants and mercenaries had been any object of desire. “It is not too familiar but I might remind you that I oft only have but one sleep and the lamp light will surely keep you as roused as your fear.”

 

Dismissing it with a wave of his hand, Enjolras said, “How often do I fall asleep at my desk with my lamp lit only to wake to Courfreyac or Combeferre scolding me? The summer before you came to us, Combeferre joined with Joly and they held my desk hostage for half the season until they were sure I was sleeping properly. You may continue with your poetry if I may join you.”

 

Unable to think of another reason to deny their leader sleep, Grantaire moved so that Enjolras could take up half of the straw stuffed mattress, generously giving him the lumpier side. Enjolras silently climbed onto the mattress and flashed him a rare smile, the brightness temporarily driving the fatigue and age from his face. He wrapped himself in a gray wool blanket like a caterpillar and closed his eyes beatifically.

 

In short time, Grantaire was grateful that the other man seemed to quickly drift off to sleep. He had never imagined the impossible distraction of Enjolras sleeping beside him in his nightshirt, his bare feet sliding out from under the blanket. Grymestone was interesting, but she did not hold a candle to watching the blond sleep. It would be well past midnight before Grantaire lowered the lamp wick and sought sleep himself, but he did not remember reading a single poem after Enjolras joined him in the room.

 

*

 

Worked continued, on the borrowed land and in the village, as usual after the feast for the viscount, but Grantaire could feel the tension in the air, like a summer storm. Floreal and Babet still managed to make and distribute clothing among the villages along the river while Combeferre and Bahorel managed the end of the harvest before the harsh frosts of winter drove them indoors. Fantine used her much lauded skills to feed any hungry mouth in need. Musichetta fussed with Eponine and Bossuett when she came around. Feuilly printed Enjolras’ fiery sermons; Courfreyac continued to heal; Joly kept up his medical practice.

 

They all waited in bated silence for news from the estate. Javert was conspicuously absent, from both Chatham and the fields they had cleared for herds and harvest. Rumours abounded among the New Levellers and those they helped. The long absent viscount was once again absent: perhaps consulting his peers about what he could do about an upstart earl full of religious zeal.

 

Enjolras took to working on his writing in the common hall again, although Grantaire suspected this was to act as something of a chaperone to his half-brother, who had begun openly courting Eponine. The quiet redhead was circumspect, particularly when they were working together, and Grantaire imagined Eponine might be giddy with the change of status, even if Jehan were a bastard, but never dared the familiarity of asking such a bold question.

 

It was something of an exquisite agony to be so constantly around Enjolras, knowing he shared his nature and was yet untouchable as an archangel. He wrote in the common hall with him and would often come to inspect his work, touching his shoulder or hand familiarly. Once he went so far as to pull some of Grantaire’s hair into a braid, while he sat frozen at his bench. The midnight visits became common as well; Enjolras claimed conversations with Grantaire would clear his head between sleeps.

 

“Where is Enjolras?”

 

It seemed foolish and too familiar as soon as he spoke the words, but it surprised him to come up to the common hall and only Jehan sat at the table while Musichetta worked at carding some wool. He had become such a fixture in his life as fall turned to winter that his absence was palpable. They rarely breakfasted together, that was Enjolras planning time with Lords Combeferre and de Courfreyac, but he was always, now, in the common hall working.

 

Jehan offered him a rare small smile He had woven some of Eponine’s blue and gray ribbons into his braid that morning, like a knight wearing his ladylove’s colors. “Is young love so strong that you cannot bear him a trip to the Chatham estate for the morning?”

 

Feeling the blood pounding in his ears, Grantaire grabbed for the edge of the table. Musichetta watched with concern but did not rise from her chair.  “I was only asking after him for his habit has become to work among us during the day.”

 

“And who would not want to labor side by side with the soul they love?” Jehan asked, turning back to his work. He had copies of both Douay Rheims and Coverdale in front of him. Enjolras truly loved his brother and his work to indulge him so. “Truly my heart sank when Enjolras said that Eponine would be joining their lordships up at the estate, although I have no taste for such work.”

 

“As it should be for sweethearts,” Grantaire replied, trying to focus on preparing his tools for the morning. Without Eponine’s aid, he would have a slower morning than he had anticipated. “I, lacking any such sweetheart of my own, should not overstep propriety and assume I have any right to your brother’s work or movements.”

 

Jehan very slowly laid his pen down and turned to face Grantaire. Normally of a retiring nature, Grantaire had never seen the poetic young man look so grim. “Are you to let me know that you have misrepresented yourself and have no loyalties to him?”

 

“I acknowledge I do not belong to his sect,” he said slowly, choosing his words carefully. Jehan was clearly angry and he did not want such ire to get back to Enjolras. He did not know what could so suddenly light anger in him, but he was a poet and a new paramour and thus apt to mercurial moods. “As such, my allegiances might be considered limited, though I would follow him to world’s end. His newfound tolerance for my atheism and bitterness has been quite welcome and any entrance into the brotherhood shared by the Amis, however conditional, is gratifying.”

 

Apparently, this was very much the wrong thing to say. Jehan’s face flushed under his freckles, his green eyes flashing with emotion and reminding Grantaire of no one more than his brother. “You cur!” he snapped. “You truly are as low a beast as you say you are!”

 

Grantaire flinched, as though he had been slapped. Jehan was not wrong, but it stung to hear the words come out of his mouth.  He had only so recently stopped worrying ceaseless about his place here, after many late night assurances and promises from Enjolras, and now, surely, Jehan would have his brother’s ear when he returned.

 

“Hold,” Musichetta laid a restraining hand on Jehan’s shoulder, her wool discarded on the table. She did not share in the poet’s anger, but Grantaire could not read her normally so pleasant face. “We know our friend better than this by now, Jehan, and I am the one who reminds my husbands of his restraint and reminder of the importance of tradition and propriety. And my husband reminds us all that sometimes melancholia prevents its victims from seeing the world as it is.”

 

“I can see as it is just the same,” Grantaire told her, rising from the bench. He would face this fate as a man, but knew he would be unable to face Enjolras. Jehan would have his brother’s ear by the time the day was out, but he might be halfway to Blackwood by then. “If I be a dog, I shall collect my things to find a new place in the world. You may tell your brother that I shall leave the fine set of clothes for him to gift to one more worthy; I shall lay them out on the mattress I called my own.”

 

“What is this?” Enjolras demanded from the door to the hall, where he stood with Eponine and Combeferre. The sunlight framed him, lighting his golden curls as a holy halo and emphasizing the beautiful austerity of his burgundy jacket and white neckerchief. “You are leaving us?”

 

Ashamed that this argument was becoming so public, Grantaire did not answer him and could not meet his eyes. He had so enjoyed their unique friendship that losing it, and in front of the others, was humiliating beyond compare. He closed his eyes and gasped when he felt Enjolras’ hand upon his cheek. It was warm and he could feel the callous on his forefinger where the pen rubbed it. 

 

“Why would you depart when we have only just begun?” Enjolras asked, his voice low enough not to carry through the hall. His breath was hot on Grantaire’s ear. “I felt that we are embarking on something momentous and now you speak of leaving us entirely.”

 

“He called his allegiances to you conditional,” Jehan told his brother in a voice that carried all too well. “If you would give him sweet nothings, know what he says when he is not in your presence.”

 

Enjolras dropped his hand from Grantaire’s cheek as though burned. The heat remained in Grantaire’s skin, a dear reminder of what he was losing. “Is this true?”

 

With his eyes still closed, Grantaire could not bring himself to speak, so Musichetta found her voice for him. “Truly, no. He called your tolerance of him welcome and believes his confraternity among us conditional. Do not worry, Enjolras, for any but the black bile that clouds his judgement. Do not question his loyalty by rash words spoken.”

 

“I am not an invalid,” Grantaire snapped. He opened his eyes to look at Musichetta, knowing she meant well but unable to brook her words. She stood with her hand still restraining Jehan, her dark eyes soft with compassion.  “I know that I belong not to your sect; I am an atheist and thus can hardly profess your faith.”

 

“This is over faith?” Enjolras’s tone lightened and he smiled broadly at Grantaire. “You know by now, I pray, that I am not one of those cocksure men of the church who demands the unquestioning faith of the men and women I see below me. You suffered and lost your faith, but by the rights, you behave as one of the best of us. You follow all the guidelines and bylaws of our sect but for profession of faith and none can force belief upon you.”

 

“And what of personal fealties?” Jehan pressed. He broke free from Musichetta’s arm and stepped to join his brother. Side by side, Grantaire wondered how he had not always known them to be kin. Though Jehan was ruddy where Enjolras was fair, they were from the same mold. “I spoke not of faith for your irreligion is well known and does not prevent you from doing good in the world. I would not hold such quirks of character against you.”

 

“Personal fealties?” Grantaire repeated, frowning. “My family are long dead and buried; my masters dead of plague or worse. I have pledged my time among you as my newfound family to replace bonds of blood with fervent vows. You were kind enough to take me in when I was near death, I would be a villain to repay kindness with wickedness.”

 

“To us all, as a sect, or to one in particular?” Jehan pressed, determined to see this through. His normally gentle demeanour was steely and his thin lips pursed in resolve.

 

“Jehan, cease!” Enjolras snapped at his brother, clasping him on the shoulder in reprimand. “You overstep your bounds! If Grantaire speaks not in a public hall, that is his own decision and no one - not you, not I - has the right to pressure our equals into unlawful statements that strike fear into the heart of doughty men.”

 

Uncowed by his powerful older brother, Jehan continued, leaning toward Grantaire. “I would not pressure a man nor a woman, but I would not have any but the best for you and that means, in the safety of what he has recognized as our own sworn family, acknowledging here or forswearing his suit.”

 

Grantaire looked from Jehan to Enjolras and back again as Combeferre quietly barred the door, lest a stranger come upon the dispute. Thankful for the privacy, such as it was, Grantaire dared ask, “Are you suggesting that your brother is my suitor? Is this why you compared me to yourself?”

 

Enjolras’ pale eyes flicked to see that Combeferre had barred the door before speaking, “Truth, R, am I not?”

 

“I have never had a suitor nor paid suit,” Grantaire said, sitting down on the bench heavily. He had planned a quiet morning illustrating Daniel refusing to eat at Nebukanezzar’s table; this was nothing like that. “I thought you found me perhaps a good friendand uncovered in yourself a newfound broad-mindedness to overlook my failings.”

 

Musichetta laughed, but it was a joyful sound without any spite. Her dark curls bounced as she shook with joy. “Oh, R, Joly is not wrong when he tells you the black bile blinds you to the wonders around you. The world could see the beauty of the gifts he has given you; you are the apple of his eye. That you cannot see that is only melancholia speaking lies to you.”

 

Grantaire looked up to Enjolras, Earl Enjolras, a fiery brand among men. From his golden braid to leather hunting boots, he was the picture of a proud yeoman, yet Grantaire knew he was so much more than that, even withstanding his title. “Do they speak true?”

 

“It is not my habit to speak of such things in crowds,” Enjolras said slowly and looked to Jehan, his gaze as steely as his brother’s. “And my brother knows my habits well, so do not think I do not see what you are doing. But today is a day of great celebration and, as all here are family and Amis, I would be amiss to deny my heart. I would have you as a suitor and assumed we had undertook such a courtship.”

 

“Oh.” Grantaire paused, overwhelmed by the thought. Enjolras was still a mighty, avenging Michael, but an angel who desired him as a suitor and comrade. “I would not say no. I could not say no.”

 

“Grand. We shall speak later, after I have reprimanded my brother, though his heart may have been in the right place,” Enjolras said, grasping him by his upper arm. In a louder voice, he announced, “We come from Viscount Ultime Fauchelevent’s home with great news, for both the future of our faith and the future of equality in Britain! Eponine, as much of this is the result of your cunning and perception and it is your news to share.”

 

Gathering herself up at the attention of everyone in the common hall, Eponine grinned wolfishly, her teeth white against her skin. She was austere in a dark gray riding habit and dark felt hat covering her braids, but she radiated satisfaction and pride.  “The viscount has agreed to allow us to remain on his grounds, providing education, food, ale, and clothing to the people of Chatham village and its environs.”

 

Musichetta rushed and embraced Eponine in effusive joy, tears streaming down her face while Jehan gazed at her in affectionate amazement, his jaw slack. Combeferre grinned at them from where he stood at the door, sharing in the relief and satisfaction. The news was as pleasant as it was unexpected. Grantaire knew they had all expected to be driven from their found home and the whispered question was how much force Fauchelevent would allow Javert to employ.

 

“I would never speak an unkind word against your intelligence or ability to pull an argument in the direction you desire,” Grantaire began as Musichetta released Eponine. “And while I know, among us all men and women are equal before the eyes of your God, how on earth did you manage to convince a viscount to listen to the words of a slave woman?”

 

Eponine regarded him darkly and he knew only their friendship saved him a pithy, scathing dismissal. Even Enjolras frowned deeply at the question, clearly disquieted that the man he admitted was the object of his affection would so quickly reject the very foundation of their work. Waving his hand quickly as even Combeferre approached from the hall doors, which he unbarred and opened, Grantaire explained.

 

“I am no lordling, but I have walked among aristocrats from the Peers of England to Mohammedan Beys of the Ottomans and I a commoner. One things they have in common, our current lords excepting, is their love of hierarchy and that they are above us.” Grantaire met Eponine’s eyes and hoped she understood it was his protective nature and not scorn that made him speak. “The viscount has been expanding his holdings in the colonies and employs such a villain as Javert; he is no different than any other and, having rescued his apparent daughter from Barbados, is certainly no stranger to their brutal hierarchies and chains.”

 

“He has lately been in the province of Maryland, where they practice religious pluralism,” Eponine told him primly, raising her head haughtily, “which softened him to hosting Enjolras’ radicals away from the persecution we might face elsewhere and his heart is softened to me, in particular, because he remembers as well as I do the dismal home from which he stole Cosette. She had apparently, asked for me, so I could speak to whether the lords were doing unspeakable deeds to the women in the name of charity. Javert has not stopped pouring poison in the viscount’s ear, despite Cosette telling him of our work in particular.”

 

“You never said anything of the sort!” Combeferre exclaimed, scandalized, drawing his hand over his heart.

 

“And you did not listen to the quiet conversation of two women who knew suffering as children together,” Eponine replied coolly. “Lady Euphrasie Fauchelevent is not one to underestimate, nor, apparently, her sway over her father. We conferred while the men went about their important business of the legality of their faith on the estate and, when my turn came to speak, I told Fauchelevent of what horrors would have befallen his people, who depend upon his generosity and are his responsibility, while he was away if they leant upon Javert and not les Amis. I spoke of the work for women, among the herds and the spinning and dyeing and weaving; of the education for the children, as Feuilly and Combeferre prepare them for schooling and the trades; of feed and clothing the destitute among us. Lastly, I told him of our work, of writing and illustrating a Bible for children, one that would bear the name of his estate as the place offering such fertile ground to educate every child in the English speaking world.”

 

“Ah, Eponine, you are brilliant!” Jehan leapt up and clasped her hands in his. He dared to kiss her cheek in joy. “You spoke to his lapsed duties as a lord, not trying to win his heart, but his guilt. You are pragmatic even when you speak with the words of a poet.”

 

“And what said Lady Euphrasie when she learned of the lack of rapine and abundance of work in the women’s house?” Musichetta asked with a smile, as though she were not surprised that Eponine was the voice who won the day. 

 

“She said she will attend our next open meeting and plans to drag her Papa to services,” she replied with a small smile. “It seems the politics of Maryland were not much more to their constitutions than island living and she has hopes that green England might restore his spirit. She appreciates what we are doing and had some compliments for our boldness of venture.”

 

“She sounds a woman of our shared spirit,” Musichetta said, taking Eponine by the arm. “We must go tell the women’s house of your deeds; I believe we may convince Fantine that you deserve a special place at the celebration I know shall be held now that we’ll stay on.”

 

Grantaire watched them sashay out of the common hall, Eponine’s mannish gray skirt a contrast to Musichetta’s wide blue one. Left alone with the men in the hall, he took a steadying breath to remember that Combeferre was in no position to hold Enjolras against him and Jehan had merely defended his brother’s honor. He released a gusty sigh; they would stay and the viscount would not be employing force against them. They were safe, even Grantaire. He closed his eyes; even Grantaire was safe this time.

 

*

 

On an unseasonably warm and sunny afternoon, Grantaire joined Joly and Feuilly in the village of Barkside, further down the river than he had ventured since Joly took him under his care. Feuilly had a large kit filled with Enjolras’ latest papers, including Feuilly’s  own venture into a primer for children, while Joly pulled a small handcart with barley bread, cold pudding, and dried meat. Grantaire was allowed to carry the allotment of blankets Floreal and Musichetta had woven from last season’s wool.

 

The walk along the riverbank was pleasant in the mid-morning sun. Joly was always a pleasant companion and Feuilly, a printer and former soldier, was affable and articulate. Feuilly was close with Enjolras, as his printer, and Grantaire had slowly found his anxiety around the red haired man ease, despite his association with his former life.

 

Babet had made sure they were prepared for the cold of the winter’s day, despite the pleasant sunlight, before they left the muddy courtyard near Chatham.  He and Joly fussed unduly over Grantaire’s gray woolen coat and muffler, especially after Joly began to worry aloud about miasma rising from the icy river. Feuilly, for his part, had immediately loosened his muffler and opened his coat when they came to the river path, insisting the breeze coming over the water was good for his health.

 

“I never realized what the artist you were,” Feuilly told him, as they neared a curve in the river bank, sheltered by a copse of winter-bare willows. “When I saw you before, in service, I would have called you a shopkeep or some other profession. Davis, my commander, always said you kept quiet about your past because you were trained as a barber-surgeon and did not want to be in charge of putting down your fellow soldiers.”

 

“A barber-surgeon? Me?” Grantaire exclaimed in surprise, attempting to keep an eye on his footing. Though the day was bright, they were recovering from nearly a fortnight of perpetual driving gray rain. “I scarce became a wandering artist and even then, gave up my dreams that I have no hopes of attaining today. I would have made a poor apprentice to a barber.”

 

“Fie, R,” Joly retorted, from behind his muffler. He was not of Feuilly’s mind and had warned Grantaire several times of the dangers of cold, wet air. “You have a fine understanding of the medicine I employ and if you were not the artist you were, I or Combeferre would happily take you as an assistant. As it is, I may need one. Word is spreading that Fauchelevent is allowing our presence and more peasantry have been calling on my practice.”

 

“I hope I have not put too much of a strain on your medical practice.”

 

The young men froze as they came around the turn and upon Viscount Fauchelevent standing on the muddy riverbank. Seeing the noble in humble clothes, with the huge man wrapped in a drab wool coat with a matching broad brimmed hat, was as surprising as seeing him at all. All of his dealings had been on the estate, with Combeferre and Enjolras. Even Eponine’s encounters with the mysterious man had entirely been mediated by Lady Euphrasie.

 

“Lord Enjolras told me that you were seeing to the needs of my people in Barkside,” he told them in his gravelly voice. “I have come to realize that not all has been well in England in my absence and, while your leaders are fine orators, I would see what work you are doing to mend the wounds that have been festering.”

 

Feuilly, unintimidated by the man, offered his hand. “Indeed, we are on our way to offer succor to those who would suffer in Barkside and accept any man or woman who would aid us in our companionship, my lord.”

 

“If we are companions, then call me by my name,” Fauchelevent said, shaking his hand. “I realize Javert was conforming to the modes of the time, but I am shocked at the state of affairs. I had thought the colonies suffering from English greed. Now I believe the misery spreads from the heart of England to her children.”

 

As they entered Barkside, Feuilly called out in a loud voice, announcing their presence. His printshop was nearby and he was well known and well beloved in the neighborhood. Very quickly, he amassed a throng of beggar children, barefoot and in rags despite the winter cold. He lifted the littlest one into his arms and Grantaire estimated the child could not have been more than five, although deprivation and hunger could make even hardiest child appear younger.

Fauchelevent’s face was a study in grave compassion, but Grantaire did not read any shock in his face. Instead he turned to help Joly set up his cart so they might hand out the food Fantine and Jehan had prepared the prior day. Grantaire set his pack on a mostly dry stone near the common and waited for any man, woman, or child who might need a warm wool blanket against the growing winter cold.

 

He did not wait long and was soon chatting with the goodwives of the village who had learned to trust the Amis, against their better natures. He was unknown in the neighborhood, but the blankets were necessary for many of the families and he found that conversation about the children’s Bible softened the heart of many mothers. The suffering was great enough to give him pangs; it would take so many more to heal these wounds and raise up children who did not know deprivation.

 

“Here.” He offered a brown blanket to a young mother, her infant in her arms, wrapped in an ancient shall that he suspected had once swaddled her. “Take it and keep the child warm.”

 

“Why do you do this?” she asked suspiciously, even as she accepted the blanket. “I have heard that you are run, in secret, by nobles, the same who starve us and turn us out of our homes.”

 

Grantaire looked to where the viscount was handing out bread like alms to the poor and thought for a moment, remembering, too, when he learned the true identities of Enjolras, de Courfreyac, and Combeferre. “I am a commoner, too, and I would not dare to understand the mind of those above my station, but that is your landlord there, in the great hat.”

 

She looked sharply at Joly and Fauchelevent, where they made easy talk as they went about their work. Fauchelevant towered over the doctor, who leaned heavily on his cane, but gave off the air of protector, rather that predator. “Neither of those men is Javert. He put my sister and her children into the streets last year. I haven’t heard from them since then. I hope they made it to her husband’s brother in Felbridge, but I have no way of knowing.”

 

“So it is across the country,” Grantaire replied, thinking of his own sister, spared deprivation only by death and himself, absolved only by the generosity of de Courfreyac and his people. “Perhaps this is a reaction to such disservice and evil we see in our time. I have seen the corruption that could end our race as we know it. Perhaps some of the higher classes have realized that the utter destruction of our classes would lead to the inevitable end of theirs.”

 

“Assured destruction is the fate of our time,” the woman murmured, shifting the babe in her arms to allow him to nurse. “Perhaps we have earned the ire of God for unknown sins, to receive such treatment. We did not repent when struck with plague and fever nor when given flood and famine worthy harvests. Now we have been given jackals to make the law.”

 

“If it is jackals who make the laws, then those laws are for jackals, not men,” Fauchelevent said, having stepped over to them witha piece of barley bread with a bit of butter on it in his great dark hand. He gently offered it to the woman.  “There are those who would enshrine the law and put it above morality. Some, as my man Javert, would say morality is the law - or, perhaps, law is morality..”

 

“My lord,” the woman murmured, frantically attempting to drop into a curtsy without dislodging her child. She was as frightened of the viscount as she might be of Javert.

 

“I am Fauchelevent.” He put his free hand under her elbow to balance her and pulled her upright. “I have seen human misery written into the law in my travels and I have watched the total destruction of the soul of a man. I will not have that on my lands, nor among my people, if I can stop it. If these wayward men are of sounder heart than those with power, it is my Christian duty to support them. I am too sorry that I was detained away so long, madam.”

 

“I am sure your business is important and I would not have the mind to know it.” She ducked her head, not meeting their eyes, and scurried across the green, bread in hand.

 

“I have shirked my responsibilities too long,” Fauchelevent said quietly to Grantaire. He dared not judge the viscount, but he sounded as though his very soul were weary with the strain of seeing his people deteriorate before his eyes. “The suffering of the poor knows no nationality nor creed, but it is our Christian charge not only to prevent its increase but do what we may to alleviate it. None should suffer as these poor souls; have any of them ever had the coin to go to a cobbler?”

 

“I’m no God-fearing Christian, but I have taken up the mantle as well, m’lord,” Grantaire told him after handing out his final blanket. “There’s nothing Christian or godly about the suffering of the people and eschewing suffering is what makes us human, not religious.”

 

The viscount gazed at him, unreadable. “An atheist then? You must be the artist my daughter is fanatical about; she speaks of your work with great praise. The earl is your patron, yes?”

 

“Not as my patrons on the Continent were,” Grantaire allowed. “His is a religious sect and my labor for his Bible and, I suppose when that is done, I might illustrate his tracts or whatever other need the group might have for my limited skills.”

 

“And your irreligion does not bother him? I have known some who would call you damned, no matter your willingness to hand out blankets.”

 

“No man can know another’s soul,” Feuilly said, joining them with a child on his back and another clinging to his leg. “I am among the faithful at St Elizabeth’s and so could not fully call myself among the New Levellers, yet here I am with their doctor and their atheist. Such is how it goes, sir, and it does not prevent the work from being done and done well.”

 

*

 

The night had fallen early and cold. The blankets on his mattress were scarcely enough to keep him warm and Grantaire lay in bed even still in his breeches below his nightshirt. As it often did, sleep escaped him and he lay up reading by the light of his lamp.

 

The house was quiet, the noise of the early evening dying down as the others fell asleep. For once, the silence of the dark winter night was comforting, rather than oppressive. Grantaire had pushed his bed against the warm brick of the chimney, taking comfort in their soothing heat. He hoped that Enjolras’ little garret was not too cold for him.

 

He turned the page in the book Marius loaned him earlier in the week and listened to the sounds of the house. The eaves creaked and the wind whistled coldly around the slate tiles of the roof over his head. An owl hooted somewhere outside, down closer to the river.  He closed his eyes and breathed deeply, wondering if it might snow tomorrow.

 

A rustling noise across the hall interrupted his meditations. The sounds were as familiar as the wind over the roof; Enjolras had woken from his first sleep and, no doubt, was working on a small midnight project before settling down again for his second. He did not visit Grantaire every night, especially if he had been suffering from exceptional insomnie or Joly prescribed him any tonics during the day.

 

Grantaire rose, shivering as his bare feet touched the cold floor board. He thought about taking up Musichetta’s offer of rag rugs to insulate his room against the creeping cold. Crossing out of his little room, he found himself, for the first time, standing before Enjolras’ door. He had always received the other man into his quarters, but never dared the familiarity and boldness to seek him out at night. Biting his lip, he knocked softly on the door.

 

Enjolras opened the door, looking like a rumpled angel. His blond curls were tousled and pressed to the right side of his face, but his blue eyes were bright and he smiled at the sight of Grantaire. “Come inside.”

 

Grantaire stepped into his chambers, taking in Enjolras’ private sanctuary with care. His straw mattress was a twin to Grantaire’s, pressed tight to the wall, and he, too, had a trunk and chest against the whitewashed far wall. A writing desk of English oak with a matching bookcase was set next to the window, exactly where light would illuminate although it was now lit by a pair of brass lamps. The bookcase was crammed with books to overflowing and over his bed, Grantaire recognized a painting of Hadrian rescuing Antinous from the Marousian lion. It was the bedchamber of a spoiled noble who had taken on the life of an ascete. 

 

Enjolras took his seat at the desk and motioned for Grantaire to seat in a small chair by the bed. “It is no objection, but what brings you calling at this hour?”

 

“I heard you rouse and thought, perhaps, I might be able to pay you suit as you do me,” he explained, anxiously watching Enjolras’ face for approval or disapproval. 

 

“You are a welcome distraction. Combeferre worries when I work at night; he says it will aggravate my yellow bile,” Enjolras told him easily, his voice low and intimate. “I am sure biding a little time in your fine company will render us both more sanguine in nature.”

 

“Then, if I am welcome, I would discuss the viscount.”

 

“Was he unwelcome at Barkside, then?” Enjolras asked with a frown, leaning forward so his elbows rested on his knees. His loose curls tumbled down his shoulders, brushing his arms like so many golden feathers. “He is the soul of discretion and yet I am still unsure of his character. I am more sure of his daughter, who shines like a light when she and Eponine converse, but Javert remains in his employ and I do not know what his business was overseas.”

 

“He joined Joly in handing out food and may be more after your own heart than you suspect.” Grantaire quietly appreciated the play of lamplight on Enjolras’ golden hair and youthful face. “He near frightened a peasant woman to death when he said, what was it? If jackals are making the laws, then the laws are for jackals, not men.”

 

Huffing a little laugh, Enjolras’ eyes sparkled deep blue, enticing Grantaire’s heart. “I know he is not truly bad, if only that no one with poor character would raise Lady Euphrasie. He has made passing mention of owing his life and soul to a Maryland papist by the name of Myriel, but never elaborated. I am not one to press a man for his history, nor judge him for it.”

 

“A prudence that more than one of us has appreciated,”  Grantaire murmured. Emboldened, he reached out and clasped the other man’s hand in his own, as he had longed to do so often in the common hall. When Enjolras entwined his fingers with his and held fast, he dared again. “But, in the privacy of your rooms, with your word that it remain privy, I would answer if you asked a question of my life story.”

 

“I would not wish to ask anything you do not desire to answer.” Enjolras lifted their joined hands and kissed his knuckles. He met Grantaire’s eyes. “However, if you offer me a revelation, then confess some kindness of your life, some secret joy that you carry with you. I know, if not the details, that the world has been unkind to you, so I would fan the embers of compassion the world threatens to extinguish.”

 

Grantaire thought for a long moment, looking past Enjolras to the flames in his twin lamps and the jumping shadows they cast on his wall. Eventually he spoke, his voice taut with emotion. “My father was a drunkard and I was a fool to try to impress him with military rank, so I will not speak of him. My godfather, though, was a kind man and an inspiration. He was the man who thought I would do well at the Sorbonne and sponsored me.”

 

“He saw the artist in you?”

 

“Something of the sort.” It was bittersweet, after all these years, to remember the kind man who had once seen so much in him, even if it had only been reflected light. “He was a relation of my mother’s, although the details of that were never illuminated to me. Mabeuf was well connected and I was lucky he both assented to take me as a godson and that he loved me as the son he never had. He supported my education and training, even sent letters of introduction to Gros, my mentor.”

 

“See, there are still glowing embers of love in the world.” Enjolras smiled at him again and it warmed Grantaire to share the tale of his godfather with him. “I don’t suppose we have Godfather Mabeuf to thank for assuming that you, too, were a lord?”

 

“Father always said I was getting airs above my station and I’d earn myself a whipping or worse. It was Mabeuf’s idea that I should go to France and make a name for myself there, away from my family’s influence.” Grantaire smiled at the memory of his godfather seeing him off at Dover. “It was my greatest disappointment that I never saw him again.”

 

“My godfather, Tholomyes, was a louse. I’m happy yours provided what your father could not,” Enjolras told him. His grip on Grantaire’s hand  tightened and he looked down, pulling their hands into his lap. “It’s good to see you smile. It changes your whole face.”

 

“I will be ugly whether I smile or frown, but if a smile pleases you more, I can attempt to put on a happier expression even if I am glum,” Grantaire offered, his heart racing. The feel of Enjrolas’ hand in his, the callous on his forefinger from the long hours writing, was jolting.

 

“No, I think it is the memory of joy that transforms you, allowing your soul to shine through you,” Enjolras told him. He let out a slow sleepy yawn. “The hour grows late and we have been talking a time.”

 

Grantaire looked down again at their clasped hands in Enjolras’ lap. The other man did not seem to intend to release him to his own room. He did not know what was expected of him; he had been in a man’s bed before, yes, but never a courtship. He had never risked late night or early morning pillow talk, never dared to hope for the heart as well as the body. No man had ever held his hand as they sat in their nightshirts, holding onto him as a drowning man might grasp a rope thrown from his ship.

 

“It is quite a cold night,” Enjolras continued, apparently oblivious to Grantaire’s inner turmoil. “Courfreyac was predicting snow at supper tonight and he is more reliable than an almanac at such things. Fantine made me promise to stoke and bank the hearth before sleeping tonight; she always fears the first snow of the winter will put out the fire entirely.

 

“The chimney comes up through my room,” Grantaire said, a bit uselessly. He did not understand this turn of conversation.

 

“The smaller hearth in the receiving room is below us,” Enjolras told him easily. “It warms the room shared by Joly, Musichetta, and Bossuet before coming up through here. As soon as the weather turns, sometimes as early as Michaelmas, I move my bed to be flush with it. It is safer than a bed warmer and Bahorel performed some sorcery when he devised that hearth, for it truly keeps the heat better than the main one.”

 

“That is wise. I am sure your warm bed must be calling to you.”

 

Enjolras did not release Grantaire hand, though he nodded. “However, it is still quite cold and I believe Courfreyac was right; as close as we are to the casement, I can smell snow.”

 

Grantaire stared at Enjolras. The man was a reknowned orator; this speech was not empty, but Grantaire could not follow. He knew the subtext of his sermons calling for the rights of the poor, the implications of his pamphlets on education, but he was lost here. He had never been a man for love and love talking and it was never more obvious than when he found himself alone with Enjolras, even now when desire, behind the garret door, was no longer forbidden.

 

Sighing, Enjolras released Grantaire’s hand gently and with a tender smile, his curved lips wine dark in the golden lamplight. “If you would be my darling, I would have you as a bed warmer. It would be warm my soul and risk no fire. I had hoped, since you joined me in my own room tonight, that it would not broach your sense of propriety. If I have, I offer my sincerest apologies.”

 

“I am the least respectable among us,” Grantaire said ruefully, conscious that the pale sleeve of his nightshirt rode up, revealing his scarred and crippled wrist. “There are few who would decline the bed and companionship of an archangel, much less an archangel with a title from the Crown, even if it flouted all social convention.”

 

“I do not want the company of one who desires my face nor my title,” Enjolras snapped, his lips pursing. “I am interested in you, in Grantaire, in an educated, wily atheist who has attracted my attentions, no other. If I wanted to sell my body or birthright, I would have joined in false matrimony to one of the many eligible women of my own class. I am sure there is more than one who would have taken a cold marital bed over the abuses my peers put to their women.”

 

“I did not mean it that way; I am not the rhetorician you are,” Grantaire apologized, hoping he had not ruined the quiet intimacy of the night. “I meant that, as I am the most unsuited sweetheart I have ever encountered, I do not know why a man who is not unlike the Archangel Michael deems me to be his own darling but I am not so much a fool as to reject you. I have gazed at you with longing for far too long; if you open your arms, whatever restraint and civility I still grasp will be lost.”   
  


Rising to his feet, Enjolras pulled him into his arms, engulfing him. “If that is all it takes to see you lose that self restraint, then my arms and bed are open to you, and you alone, every night. I should like to you see you wild.”

 

*

 

“I have heard rumors that you have found yourself in comfortable apartments,” Eponine murmured, coming alongside Grantaire as dusk fell after Sabbath prayer services. They were crossing the snow crusted yard toward the women’s house, where Fantine and Floreal had promised warm pea and turnip stew with rye bread to fill their stomachs.

 

Grantaire looked about sharply to see if anyone overheard her before responding in a sharp whisper. “I would that you would not speak so boldly.”

 

Shrugging unrepentantly, Eponine fell in line next to him. Her wide charcoal gray skirt brushed against his boots. “The rumors come from Jehan, who is delighted and cannot bear not sharing good news, but I am not taunting you. I know Jehan and his brother have sometimes been mistaken and I would not have you come to private or public shame for lack of conversation. The other houses and cottages are aflutter with movement and a room in your common house would be a prize.”

 

“Did we gain a flock of new converts when I did not see?” Grantaire asked, holding the door to the hearth room in the women’s house so Eponine would not stumble on the crosspiece. “I am offended that Enjolras did not see fit to tell me of this. I know he is usually triumphant. Oh! Is it that this Advent has been so bitterly cold that he dare not baptize them and is struck with disappointment?”

 

Eponine did not respond immediately, but made a little small talk with Toussaint and Bahorel as they doled out their portions of the hearty stew in earthenware bowls. Bahorel dropped generous portions of the dark winter rye bread on top and they left the ingelnook. Moving into the hall of the women’s house, Eponine led him to a pair of chairs set a little apart from the benches where most of the other’s ate and socialized.

 

“There are no new converts, not yet,” Eponine said after a long draught of stew. “It is not yet common knowledge, but Cosette wishes to join in our work among her father’s people and desires, too, a place in the women’s house with us.”

 

“Lady Euphrasie wants to enlist with us? We live in times of transition and transformation! First lords take to the lanes and fields to teach us egalitarianism and now their sisters want to live among the serfs her grandfather freed! Why, in time, all of Britain shall be reversed.”

 

Eponine rolled her eyes and took a bite of the dark rye bread. “You forget that Cosette is not like your darling, who found the light by the preaching of another. Cosette was a serving girl in my father’s house and ill treated, perhaps especially by me. The pangs of hunger and suffering of deprivation are not abstract for her. They are as real as they are to me, if more distant.”

 

“I forget myself. Lady Euphrasie may conduct herself as she pleases.” Grantaire scooped some of the stew with his bread and paused to eat. “I don’t quite see how this affects my apartments. I doubt her father would allow her to room in house with so many bachelors about and no chaperone to watch her.”

 

“No, he would not.” Grantaire imagined she might be blushing. “He has decreed that if she is to stay here, it will be sharing a room with me and no other. He is most concerned that the baron has begun courting her and wants no impropriety. However, I currently share a room and bed with Floreal and Zephine, when she is in town. I doubt she would room in the men’s house, even if they had room to spare, what with Marius sharing with Bahorel and Jehan already there.”

 

“That is quite the problem,” Grantaire said thoughtfully. He tapped his free hand upon his knee, thinking. “And your beau and his brother are of a mind to move me from mine and replace its occupant with another? I cannot see how that would make space in the women’s house for you and your childhood companion.”

 

“Fauchelevent agreed that he might allow Cosette in the common house, should she and Eponine take over our room, with Musichetta her chaperone, as a properly married woman, already with child herself,” Combeferre said, joining them in their corner with his own bowl of stew. He was as serious as usual, in vestments of field green still over his ordinary clothes.

 

“You’re in on this, too?” Grantaire asked, looking from him to Eponine and back. “You ought to rethink how often you join Eponine in her visits up at the manor estate. She is influencing you.”

 

“We conspired together, actually,” Combeferre replied with a smile. He pulled up a small three legged stool and joined them. “I realize that you may have Enjolras’ heart, whether you know it or not, but he is my childhood friend. He is unused to emotion, much less the strong emotions, and I sincerely doubt he consulted you about such an action. Jehan is too much the poet to think of anything but a happy ending for the brother he lionizes. Have either of them called you into their plans?”

 

Grantaire shook his head in the negative. Then a thought gave him pause. “Surely, Lady Euphrasie is a woman of the world, having travelled with her father. Ours might be considered a home of ill repute should she learn the goings-on in any of the other bedrooms.”

 

“So you have goings-on?” Eponine arched a single eyebrow.

 

Ignoring her, he continued. “She would be a wonderful addition to the cause and, no doubt, has many unique talents, but is that a risk we can take? If she were to take information back to her father, or Heaven forbid, Javert, we would be done for!”

 

“Ever the mind of a soldier even if you have the eyes of an artist,” Combeferre remarked, but it sounded almost like a compliment to Grantaire’s ears. “This is why, even if it was not your apartments in question, you should have been consulted before now. You see consequences; where we see hope of a new world, you see the danger of that world collapsing into worse ruin. Your insight is valuable, not because we are in calamity but because you can see the vipers on the path and by seeing them, we might avoid them.”

 

“However, that is not much of a worry,” Eponine interjected tugging on her long braid. “Since her father rescued her from my family’s clutches, she has been raised as a lady. It would be untoward to barge into an unrelated man’s bedroom or to the room shared by a married couple; either might lead to disgrace.”

 

“And what of Bossuet living with Joly and his wife?”

 

Combeferre steepled his fingers. “Before we wear ourselves weary with answering that, are you amenable to relinquishing your rooms? Joly has consulted with me in a professional capacity and I know you often suffer sleeplessness in addition to all else. It was one of the reasons we wanted you to have your own room and did not suggest you bunk in the men’s common house. If it would have ill effects on your recovery, I will not hear of taking over your room and I will personally make sure Enjolras finds another way to accommodate Lady Euphrasie.”

 

“I have spent more than one evening reading poetry and essays by lamplight,” Grantaire confessed. He glanced around, but no one seemed to pay attention to their trio in the corner. He choked for a moment, scarce able to believe he could speak such secrets with Eponine and Combeferre. “When Enjolras sleeps, I don’t think a cannon volley would rouse him before he is prepared to rise. I admit, too, that it has improved my melancholia to have him reach for me at night, even in his sleep.”

 

“And I know he fetched Joly when your fever spiked,” Combeferre noted. “That was the first I realized anything out of the ordinary was happening, though I am nothing but happy for the both of you, even if I was surprised. At some point, perhaps in the near future, we will discuss that, but I am satisfied your health will not suffer in such a plan.”

 

“If you did not notice anything out of the ordinary, perhaps we are overcautious,” Eponine posited. “Surely, she will be too polite to ask intrusive questions and then, it will become normal for her.”

 

Grantaire shook his head again. “It’s not what she asks that troubles me, but what tales she may bring home. She is not like you or I, where we have no other family upon this green earth. Her beloved father and Javert remain on the same estate. Even ifshe thinks little of it, Javert would take any chance to ruin us.”

 

“Surely not. It is common enough to share rooms, especially when space is less than people,” she argued. Her hands balled into little fists where they rested on her dark skirt and Grantaire knew the argument came from her heart. “I will not tell you again how it is at home, but I travelled with the Baron Pontmercy to get to Chatham and we stayed at many places, savoury and otherwise. It is not uncommon to house people like herring in a tin. I myself share a bed with Floreal each night and make room for Zephine when her work brings her back and, for myself, we have no goings-on.”

 

“I would agree; Courfreyac and I have shared rooms since university days and as long as we have portrayed it as such, we have had no problems. Indeed when Enjolras shared with us, it made perfect concealment.” Combeferre paused to finish his stew. “However, Grantaire makes a good point that they are not childhood friends or comrades thrown together by circumstance. Joly is a doctor and Musichetta his lawfully wedded wife. Bossuet, by tradition, ought not intrude without reason, especially when there are two other rooms of men in the house.”

 

“I assumed him to be Musichetta’s brother and down on his fortunes,” Grantaire offered, feeling a glimmer of hope. Lady Euphrasie had captured some small corner of his heart in the brief time he had known here; it would be good to see her more often. “It would not be so strange to want to be with family, after all.”

 

“I would not lie and it is not in any of our consciences to tell them to lie about such things,” Combeferre replied. In his green vestments, the reprimand came a little more sharply to Grantaire’s mind than it would otherwise. “We are seeking a kindly explanation, not falsehood.”

 

Eponine’s eyes lit up and she grinned, wolfish in aspect. “Then let us not lie. Her husband is a doctor and might be called away at any time. It would be unseemly for a woman of her stature to be left alone in a house of men, though they be ministers of the Lord.”

 

Grantaire laughed. “Musichetta will love that! Oh, my friends, please allow me to be the one to tell her! They shall adore the joke. Joly will be so unhappy that he is not the one allowed to protect her honor!”

 

Combeferre stood and gathered their now empty bowls. “May I suggest to Enjolras that he then discuss this with you before any action is taken? If you are to undertake this journey as Courfrey and I have, or as Joly and Bousset and Musichetta, then he must learn to take your needs into account for his planning, as you are unalike as summer and winter.”

 

*

 

Grantaire reviewed Jehan’s adaptation of the Gospel of John while Jehan stoked the fireplace closest to the work table. The day was stingingly cold even for late winter and Enjolras had made sure to stock the log baskets and one was still piled high with well aged wood. The early afternoon light was the best they had had in weeks, but Eponine was, once again, away and the cold had burrowed into his sinews and bones and stolen away any skill or artistry he had won back through several seasons of recovery. He was working only as a pair of second eyes for Jehan and to unravel any arguments Enjolras cared to share.

 

It was comfortable work and familiar, only lacking for Eponine’s presence and biting wit. For all that the weather contributed to his aches and pain and he knew he would ask Enjolras to help applying liniment and wrap his wrists that night, it was a joyful thing to have work and his pride again. The melancholia was not gone; he knew that darkness would never be far from the corners of his mind and Joly and Combeferre concurred professionally. However, it was easier to remind himself that it was the black bile and not the truth of the matter when surrounded by his family and their work.

 

Periodically he looked up from Jehan’s manuscript to gaze at Enjolras who worked on scribing his next sermon. There had been a fever sickness in some of the villages, where Joly was already sharing medicines, and he had said that morning in bed that he desired to uplift the spirits of the affected families. He was intent upon his work and Grantaire wondered at the affection kindled in his check when he watched the other man nibble on the end of his pen as he thought.

 

Grantaire had only just arrived at the resurrection of Lazarus, which he knew Jehan took great care not to frighten the impressionable children, when the breath was knocked out of him from behind. Startled, he felt small, wiry arms wrap around him and hot breath on the back of his neck. Looking down, he saw unfamiliar feminine hands clasped in front of his chest.

 

“Oh thank you, thank you, I am forever in your debt,” Lady Euphrasie cried from behind him. Her voice was as sweet and musical as Grantaire remembered from the feast.

 

Relaxing minutely when he realized his assaulter was Lady Euphrasie, Grantaire demurred. “I am not sure what I have done to receive such an honor, my lady, but I am quite confident that any debt is mine.” 

 

She released him, allowing him to turn on the bench to face the lady. He caught Enjolras knowing smile before he turned back to work. Lady Euphrasie was dressed appropriately for the weather in a dark blue wool cloak, trimmed with white rabbit fur, and joy was written on her face with gleaming dark eyes and a matching smile. Eponine was behind her, leaning casually against a table, her own fawn brown cape still wrapped about her shoulders.

 

“Eponine and poor Lords de Courfreyac and Combeferre came to tell me that you moved your things so that Eponine and I might share your attic room and I might join you,” she exclaimed, every word more joyful. “I was so sure that, not knowing me and without invitation to do so, you would think me overstepping my bounds and I knew, just as surely, that Papa would not change his rules for me leaving his household before marriage.”

 

“It was nothing,” Grantaire told her, stifling a smile. “Our home needs a woman’s touch as Musichetta cannot stand against all of us by her lonesome and, besides, it gives me more opportunity to strengthen Enjolras’ arguments.”

 

“And having the presence of a lady of your standing among us,” Enjolras said, not looking up from his sermon, “Only increases the standing of us all, Lady Euphrasie.”

 

“You must call me Cosette,” she told them. She pulled off her cloak and held revealing a modest dark blue riding habit with a fine lace collar. “My mother named me Euphrasie, yes, but none have called me that since I was an infant, save Javert and he is enough to turn the blood cold.”

 

“You are welcome among us, Cosette,” Jehan said, offering a hand from where he still stood by the hearth. Grantaire knew he only had eyes for Eponine, but he thought the lady and the poet would likely become fast friends. “If you would like to hang your cloak by the fire, I would borrow your eyes and your gentle constitution for I am sure Grantaire and Eponine have their own work to be getting on with.”

 

She handed her fur lined cloak to Jehan and turned back to Grantaire. “I confess, Master Grantaire, that you have been the topic of much conversation between myself and Eponine as we rode from my father’s home. I am quite concerned that I am inconveniencing you out of your home and you as ill as you are. You had the joy of your own room while recovering and now I have entirely put you out of your privacy.”

 

Grantaire looked over to Enjolras, who had paused in his writing and put down his pen to watch their tableau. “I swear, my lady, I would not lie to one as charming as you. Enjolras and I discussed it at great length. It is of Enjolras’ mind that we cannot use any excuse to avoid helping any who come to us and this includes you. We are rarely of one mind, but I fancy we are of complementary differences rather than contradictory.”

 

“Cosette,” Enjolras said, without rising. “We would not bring you here under false pretenses. I and Eponine spent all of yesterday preparing the room you will share, while Grantaire prepared his space in mine. I admit, I have not met my own standards of equality by reserving a level of privacy and retirement for myself that no one else has. You have opened my eyes to my own duplicity; I am the one who is in your debt, yours and Grantaire’s.”

 

Dipping into a pretty little curtsy, Cosette granted Enjolras one of her dazzling smiles. “I would hardly call you duplicitous, my lord, but if you are in my debt, consider ourselves equally indebted.”

 

Grantaire handed the manuscript back to Jehan while Enjolras invited Cosette to join them for the afternoon in the common hall. Eponine hung her cape next to Cosette’s by the fire and moved to gather her tools. Grantaire bent, pulling his own tools from under the table. They had not finished their previous day’s project, Elijah raising the son of the widow of Zarephath, but, with the light still strong, they might complete it now.

 

Seating himself next to Eponine on the bench, he quietly turned. Enjolras sat in his place, with his back to the fire where it would warm him and turn his curls to a heavenly halo. He was Grantaire’s and Grantaire was his. Jehan, sitting with Cosette and explaining the intricacies of his project was just as much Grantaire’s brother as his own. And Eponine, wolfish and beautiful Eponine, had given him back what made his soul sing.

 

“What’s wrong?” Eponine asked softly, so that her voice would not carry to the others. “Are you coming on with fever?”

 

“No,” Grantaire said slowly, with a smile. “Nothing is wrong.”


End file.
